Creating a fairer Britain
The groups actively participating in a (paper-based) job evaluation exercise can include:
Having steering groups or project teams to oversee the design and implementation of a job evaluation scheme will ensure that employees and staff representatives can participate in the scheme on a representative, structured, and clearly understood basis. Involving employees helps to gain acceptance for the scheme and promotes transparency in the ensuing pay structure.
Chairs of committees, and especially of job evaluation groups, can be very influential in determining the outcome of the groups' considerations. It is therefore important that you select chairs not just for their knowledge of job evaluation and their acceptability to the various parties involved, but also because they are unbiased and committed to ensuring that the scheme is free of sex bias.
It is good practice to include in all of these groups a representative sample of people from the spread of jobs covered by the scheme. A fair representation of women in all job evaluation groups and discussions reduces the likelihood of sex bias. Inclusion in the pool of panel members of those from ethnic minority groups, those with disabilities and from different age groups helps avoid other prohibited forms of bias and increases the credibility of the exercise with those groups.
In addition to any other training that you provide, you should ensure that all the members of all the overseeing groups receive training in how sex bias in job evaluation can arise. This will enable them to understand how their actions and decisions could produce such discrimination, and how to avoid this.
You should give your employees regular progress reports on the job evaluation process. This will help you to detect problems as early as possible and reduce the risk of disputes over the outcome.
You should keep minutes and records so that they can be made available in the event of appeals and, should sex or other forms of discrimination be alleged, at employment tribunal hearings.
Job descriptions written to an agreed format enable the jobs to be assessed according to a common standard. You will need to provide forms or guidance notes to the people writing job descriptions. The notes should contain a comprehensive list of the elements of the jobs to be assessed. This will help to avoid the possibility of unconscious bias influencing the evaluations at the job description stage. Job descriptions should contain at least the following information:
If the format for preparing job descriptions differs significantly from the above, you should consider carefully whether the omissions or the additions are likely to result in aspects of jobs more commonly performed by women being underrated relative to those of jobs more commonly carried out by men.
The person or people, often called job analysts, to whom you give responsibility for the preparation of job descriptions should be trained both in the skills involved in preparing job descriptions generally, and in the importance of ensuring that these do not omit aspects of women's jobs nor over-emphasise those job characteristics which are missing from jobs usually performed by women.
The preparation of the job description involves at least three people:
There is a long history in the UK of different titles being used for the jobs of men and women who are doing essentially the same work. Different job titles often denote a pay difference based not on the content of the work done, but on the sex of the jobholder or another form of discrimination. You should look carefully at job titles that apply to jobs done predominantly by one sex or ethnic group and which have a different counterpart applied to jobs done predominantly by the other sex or a different ethnic group.
If the different job titles do not reflect a genuine difference in the nature of the work done you should ensure that the same title applies to both jobs.
| Male job title | Female job title |
| Salesman | Shop assistant |
| Assistant Manager | Manager's assistant |
| Technician | Operator |
| Office Manager | Office Supervisor |
| Tailor | Seamstress |
| Personal Assistant | Secretary |
| Administrator | Secretary |
| Chef | Cook |
These different job titles may be applied to jobs that are in fact different. Sex discrimination occurs where these titles are applied to the same or very similar job and result in different pay rates.
Most job evaluation exercises involve selecting certain jobs as benchmark jobs. These are jobs that are used as a standard because they are considered to be typical of a grade or group of jobs. The selection of benchmark jobs should represent the spread of work done in the organisation as a whole.
If you employ only a small number of female staff you will need to ensure that you include a representative sample of the 'female' jobs amongst the benchmark jobs. This will ensure that the scheme takes account of job elements particular to the 'female' jobs, rather than continuing to rely on evaluating the jobs of female employees against a factor plan appropriate primarily to work done predominantly by men.