Creating a fairer Britain
Men and women who do equal work in your firm are entitled to equal pay. So are white and ethnic minority employees, if they are doing equal work. And disabled workers should receive pay equal to non-disabled colleagues doing equal work.
Equal work was explained in step one.
In step two you need to assess the jobs in your business in order to form a view on which of them are, in fact, equal work.
First work through the list of employees on your spreadsheet and identify which of them are doing the same jobs. For example, all your salespeople may be doing the same jobs as each other, or all your delivery drivers or production workers. Job titles are a starting point but think carefully about what people actually do. If their duties are pretty much the same, then their pay will need to be compared.
Each group of employees who are doing equal work is called an ‘equal work group’. Column G on the sample spreadsheet is headed ‘like work group’. In this column you should assign the same number to each person who is doing the same duties as someone else. So, for example, assign number 1 to all your salespeople; then number 2 to all your delivery drivers; number 3 to your production workers and so on until all the jobs that are done by more than one person have been numbered.
Some of your people may do jobs that no one else does. For example, you may have only one chef in your restaurant, or only one office manager. These jobs will not have a number in the like work column. But check that people with different titles are not, in fact, doing pretty much the same job, for example: chef/cook, administrator/clerical assistant.
Equal value is likely to be particularly important in many small firms. Here is a reminder of what it means.
Entirely different jobs can be equal in ‘value’. For example, a male warehouse worker and a female clerical worker - or a female cook and a male electrician. ‘Value’ here refers to the demands the jobs make on the people doing them - not what you think employees are worth to you financially. To decide whether different jobs in your business may be equal in value you will need to weigh up the demands of those jobs by considering aspects like the skills and knowledge they require, the responsibilities and the sorts of problems the job holders have to sort out. If the demands of the different jobs pretty much even each other out when they are all weighed up together, then the jobs are likely to be of equal value.
So, a woman office administrator might do work of equal value to a male delivery driver, and the work of a white receptionist might be equal in value to that of a black restaurant worker.
This kit contains an equal value estimator tool to help you to estimate the relative ‘size’ of jobs in your business and which jobs are of equal value. You will need detailed knowledge of the jobs to do this. Once you get used to using the assessment tool, it will not take long to assess each job. It may be helpful to do these assessments with a colleague who also knows the jobs well to get another perspective. Remember to focus on the demands of the job - not the abilities of the person doing the job.
This is about assessing jobs - not people - so you may have relatively few assessments to make, depending on the number of different jobs in your business and the make up of your workforce. Some judgement is required in deciding which jobs to assess using the equal value estimator tool - clearly, there is no need to compare the job of a female cleaner with that of the male production manager.
One ‘rule of thumb’ approach to deciding which jobs to check would be to put your jobs in rank order according to current pay (or on an organisation chart as below), then assess and compare the jobs of men and women (or by ethnicity or disability) that are one or two pay levels apart. An example is given below.
Computerco has 15 employees: 12 male and 3 female. The Head of Sales is Asian; all other staff are white. The different jobs, salaries and gender and ethnicity of jobholders are shown below.
In step two of the audit, Computerco would have identified the sales staff as their only ‘like work’ group for comparing the pay of men and women, as the same jobs are held by men and women. Which jobs should they assess using the equal value estimator tool? Reasonable possibilities are:
This means that in Computerco, five jobs, that is all jobs with the exception of the Managing Director, should be assessed using the estimator tool.
In many small firms there will be fewer jobs to assess. But care is needed in making any judgements about omitting jobs for assessment, as it is possible that jobs with widely different pay may be equal in value. If in doubt, use the tool to assess each job.
Using the equal value estimator tool, you will assign total points of between 10 and 40 to each job in the audit. Enter the total score for each job in column C of the sample spreadsheet against the names of the people doing that job. Now group jobs by their points scores into bands as follows: A - jobs with 10-14 points; B - jobs with 15-19 points; C - 20-24 points; D - 25-29 points; E - 30-34 points; F - 35-40 points. Jobs within the same band may be regarded as work of equal value.
Look carefully at any jobs with scores at the top or bottom of a points range and check your assessment of their value is sound.
Enter the letter corresponding to the points band for each job in column H of the spreadsheet. Many small firms will not have jobs in all of the six points bands.
If you use NVQs/SVQs these can be used to cross check your equal value assessments. Jobs that you assess as equal in value using the equal value estimator tool are likely to require similar level NVQ/SVQ qualifications. A summary NVQ/SVQ chart is included in this kit for cross checking purposes.
At the end of step two you should have:
Now you are ready to move to step three - summarising pay information and comparing the pay of your employees doing equal work.