Creating a fairer Britain
Job evaluation is a method for comparing different jobs to provide a basis for a grading and pay structure. Its aim is to evaluate the job, not the jobholder, and to provide a relatively objective means of assessing the demands of a job.
However, it is important to recognise that to some extent any assessment of a job's total demands relative to another will always contain elements of subjectivity. The aim is to minimise subjectivity and make decisions about jobs as rational, consistent and transparent as possible.
Job evaluation is a mechanism for establishing agreed differentials within organisations.
There are two basic types of job evaluation schemes, 'analytical' and 'non-analytical':
Jobs are broken down into components or demands, known as factors, and scores are awarded for each factor. The final total gives the overall rank order of jobs.
An analytical job evaluation scheme can provide a defence against a claim of equal pay for work of equal value, but only if you can demonstrate that the scheme is free of sex bias. You need to ensure that you can do this. The checklists will help you to do so.
Whole jobs are compared with each other. There is no attempt to break the jobs down and analyse them under their various demands or components.
Non-analytical schemes are particularly prone to sex discrimination because comparative judgements about jobs made by the evaluators will have little objective basis, other than the traditional value of the job.
Examples of non-analytical schemes include job ranking and paired comparisons. These represent different ways of drawing up a list of jobs in rank order.
The rationale for non-analytical job evaluation is that it produces a hierarchy of jobs that approximates to the 'felt-fair' ranking of these jobs in the minds of the people working in the organisation. But, in many cases,whether the jobholders are predominantly male or predominantly female influences the placing of that job within the overall rank order. Non-analytical job evaluation can thus perpetuate a situation in which the jobs most frequently performed by women are regarded as being of less value than the jobs mostly performed by men.
A non-analytical job evaluation scheme does not provide you with a defence against a claim of equal pay for work of equal value.