Why You Need Job Evaluation In Your Business

The recent equal pay award to news reader Samira Ahmed and the costs involved against the BBC are a significant warning to all employers. What happens when your staff complain about unfair wages? What happens when one of them is a woman and claims sex discrimination because you’re paying the man next to her £100 per week more for doing the same job? Where do you place a new job in your grading scheme and how can you compare its value against all of the other jobs? How can you have a fair and open pay and grading system?

The answer to these questions and more is to have a job evaluation (JE) scheme. “No!” I hear you exclaim, “I’ve heard how all that means is my employees all expect a pay rise; anyway, it’s too expensive and complex to set up.”

In actual fact, it’s not that expensive, it’s not complicated and it’s not a licence to print wages. What it can do is help you defend any equal pay claims, see where there are gaps in your pay structure; help you build and maintain a new, fairer pay & grading scheme and allow you to understand the relative value and importance of all of your jobs.

So what is Job Evaluation?

• JE is a way of determining, on a systematic basis, the relative importance of a number of different jobs – it is about the JOB and not about the people doing the job;
• JE schemes are used as the basis for equal and fair pay systems, to build a hierarchy of jobs that is fair, clear and non-discriminatory;
• It is a way of devising accurate and clear job descriptions, for assessing those descriptions against standard agreed job factors and providing a rank order of jobs in your company.

I’m listening; so why should I introduce it?

There are a number of reasons for introducing it – here are a few:

• Reduction in inequalities in the pay structure;
• No rationale for the current pay rates or grades in your firm;
• Minimising employee dissatisfaction and wage arguments;
• Improved defence against equal pay claims;
• Recruit better people and keep them for longer – your recruitment and retention issues are reduced;
• Helps with assessing your people’s individual performance.

Ok, so I’m mostly convinced, what should I do next?

Well…before you even think about starting you need to be sure this is the way forward. You need to make decisions about:

• Who is going to maintain the scheme?
• How you will gather the required information – eg are there standard job descriptions for all the jobs?
• How you evaluate the jobs?
• Who develops the grading structure?
• How pay levels will be determined?

So now I’m less sure. I’m not sure I have the time or expertise and I fear how much it’ll it cost me.

Don’t worry – we’re working on that! Here at Mayfield Human Capital we have devised a cost effective JE & Grading process, one that can be adapted to you and your business. We work with you and your people, ensuring that they understand JE and have confidence in how it works. We can apply it to your jobs and we can develop a plan and the factors to suit your needs.

There are many standard and bespoke schemes out there but we believe that, with our insight and knowledge, we have the inside track in helping you set up and implement a really effective JE scheme.

Right! So what do I do next?

Check what we do at www.mayfieldhr.com and then contact us on 07906 674934 or jond@mayfieldhc.com. Mayfield can arrange to visit and carry out an introductory assessment to let you understand more, to ask further questions and to decide on the way forward. We will work with you every step of the way.

Jon has 35+ years in employment & training, HR, industrial relations & business development, most recently with Acas. He has an interest in Job Evaluation, mediation and dispute resolution, having worked with SMEs & FTSE100 companies in conflict management, pay negotiations, redundancy consultation & change management.