Frequently Asked Questions
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QUESTION: What services are offered at www.IEDAsurvey.com?
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ANSWER: There are two services offered on our website. The "Document Warehouse" and "Survey Builder".
1. Document Warehouse Service: Allows you access to over 28,000 documents from more than 140 California Public Agencies. You can create Job Class specifications for your own agency by referring to the thousands of Job Classes created by other agencies. You can also create your own Total Compensation Surveys or Benefit Summary reports by looking at the Labor Contracts, Salary Schedules, Benefit documents, and job classes from the agencies in our Document Warehouse.
2. The Survey Builder Service: (Also included in this subscription is full access to the Document Warehouse.) The service allows you to build Total Compensation Surveys or Benefit Summary reports with just a few clicks of your mouse. What would take many hours for someone in your office, or a consultant that you hire, takes just minutes on our website. Please visit our site at www.IEDAsurvey.com and click on the link named “Quick Look”. The demonstration takes you through the process – for free. All you have to do to build a report is select from the more than 140 agencies you’d like to survey, and then choose the Benchmark Job Classes you would like to compare. A report is instantly created with the ability for you to download it to your computer in Microsoft Excel for further touch up if you’d like.
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QUESTION: Why would my agency want to send our documents to IEDA to be placed on the www.IEDAsurvey.com website?
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ANSWER: Many agencies have found it very helpful for IEDA to host their documents. Agencies are called from time to time to send their documents to other agencies for survey purposes. It’s very easy for an agency to simply refer them to www.IEDAsurvey.com to view the documents for free. Also, many agencies don’t have a website developer to create there own website or to constantly upload their documents. IEDA takes care of that at no cost! Send your documents to survey@ieda.com
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QUESTION: What is the cost of accessing the Document Warehouse?
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ANSWER: When you subscribe to the Document Warehouse, you will be given instant access to over 28,000 documents - including: MOU’s, Salary Schedules, Job Class Specifications & Benefit Information for over 150 Public Agencies in California. As of June 16th, 2003, anyone can subscribe to this service: (for example - present subscribers include: Public Agencies, Labor Unions, Law offices, Consultants, etc…):
$799 for public employer agencies/one year subscription for 5 users,
$2,000 - 2,500 for all others for a one year subscription
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QUESTION: How can I be sure the Document Warehouse will be useful to me before I subscribe?
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ANSWER: In order to see if the Document Warehouse will be useful to you and your agency, you may want to login as a "Demo" user. You may do this by first going to our website: www.iedasurvey.com and click on the word "Demo" within the first paragraph. This will take you into the Document Warehouse area.
In the next screen you will want to choose a desired city - just by checking the boxes next to the agency name.
Then click on any of the blue links named "Continue". You will then be brought to a listing of that agencies documents. As a "Demo" you will only be able to view the document titles (Job Class titles, MOU titles, Salary Schedule titles, etc...). It is when you become a subscriber that you can actually view the full document, or download it to your own computer.
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QUESTION: My agency provided you with data and I am not able to access it on the site.
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ANSWER: Each agency that provides us with data has a user id and password for access to that data at no cost. Email - survey@ieda.com or phone use (510) 653-6765 and we will be glad to provide you with the user id and password.
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QUESTION: What does the Survey Builder service do?
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ANSWER: Allows access to the Document Warehouse plus access to a comprehensive, dynamic database. The database contains tens of thousands of records allowing you to compare approximately 30 compensation & benefit elements, by class. The data can be queried in a multitude of ways. For example, it can be arrayed hourly, weekly, monthly or annually. This is a productivity tool that enables subscribing agencies to produce Total Compensation reports and/or Benefit Summaries for your comparison cities, for the data elements you're tracking, with just a few clicks of the mouse. All reports can built in minutes and may be downloaded easily to Microsoft Excel for you to further modify if needed. We encourage you to take advantage of having IEDA store your HR documents in our Document Warehouse. So, if your agency receives a request for one of the documents you’ve provided to us, simply refer that agency to www.IEDAsurvey.com and provide them with your agency’s free Guest ID & Password combination. This unique login information will grant them access to your agency’s documents in an unattended manner.
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QUESTION: What is the cost of the Survey Builder subscription (which includes full access to the Document Warehouse)?
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ANSWER: As of June 25, 2003, this service is still only available to Public Agencies (i.e. Cities, Counties, and special Districts like Fire Districts, Water Districts, and Sanitation Districts) that can send IEDA their own MOU’s, Job Classes, Salary Schedules, etc…. The cost is $6,000 per year, for the first 12 survey agencies chosen, with the ability to run an unlimited number of reports. Agencies paying consultants to create just one set of reports can cost between $8,000 and $15,000.
When an agency subscribes we ask them to tell us which agencies they customarily survey so that we may then contact each of those agencies to collect their documents. We then enter the information in our large database so that the subscriber can run reports in an instant – and at anytime (nights, weekends, holidays…).
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QUESTION: When looking at Documents in the Document Warehouse, a document reads (not available) next to the name, what does this mean?
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ANSWER: This means that the document itself is not on our web server. Either the agency has not provided it to IEDA yet, or there was a problem with uploading it to our website. Please email us if you need that document, and if we have it, we'll email it to you ASAP: survey@ieda.com
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QUESTION: Can I share my User ID and Password with someone else to use?
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ANSWER: IEDA asks that you do not share your login information. IEDA records subscriber online usage along with the respective IP address. IEDA will terminate a subscribers account without refund if login sharing has been determined.
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QUESTION: Why don't I see any "Part Time", "Elected", or "Intern" Job Classes when I build my Total Comp or Benefit Summary reports?
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ANSWER: The IEDAsurvey staff only enters data for full time employees. "Part Time" and "Intern" salary or benefit information can be researched by looking within IEDA's Document Warehouse. Proceed to the Document Warehouse and locate the agency you desire. Then veiw the applicable Salary Schedule or MOU for that position's information.
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QUESTION: Why do I receive the message: "No MOU Document Exists" when I'm creating a survey and I click on "View MOU"?
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ANSWER: The MOU you are trying to view is for an "Unrepresented Group". An acutal document does not exist since the agency never created one. Benefit information was provided to IEDA in another form.
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QUESTION: Why do I receive an error and then experience the website coming to a halt when I ran a survey report?
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ANSWER: You will experience this if one of your benchmark choices, in building your report, did not return any matching job classes from an agency you chose. Go ahead and choose another benchmark class that results in at least one job class match from the agency you have chosen.
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QUESTION: How do I search for all the job classes with a specific title?
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ANSWER: From the Document Warehouse, select the agencies you would like to search, then on the list of documents screen, select "edit" from the menu bar at the top of the screen, and select "find" from that menu item.
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QUESTION: How do I get more information or tech support about the service?
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ANSWER: Call (510) 653-6765 and ask for a member of the IEDA Survey Team or email us at survey@ieda.com.
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