JOB EVALUATION: NOTES AND REFERENCES



JOB EVALUATION: SOME NOTES AND REFERENCES.

Job Evaluation attempts to replace dispute with rationality in establishing relationships between work and reward. Advantages of widespread use are a perception of social justice, together with a measure of remuneration stability and thus a reduction in inflationary remuneration claims. The advantages would of course be substantially enhanced with one national standard system.

Job evaluation in the USA developed out of civil service classification practices and some early employer job and pay classification systems. The first point system was developed in the 1920s. Employer associations have contributed greatly to the adoption of certain plans. The spread of unionism has influenced the installation of job evaluation in that employers gave more attention to rationalized wage structures as unionism advanced. During World War II, the National War Labor Board encouraged the expansion of job evaluation as a method of reducing wage inequities.

As organizations became larger and larger and more bureaucratized the need for a rational system of paying employees became evident. Wage structures became more complex and needed some way to bring order to the chaos perpetuated by supervisors setting pay rates for their employees on their own. Job evaluation became a major part of the answer.

With the advent of the Civil Rights movement, job evaluation literally got written into the law. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required jobs to be compared on the basis of skill, effort, and responsibility to determine if they were or were not equal.

Job evaluation is now widely used throughout the world. Holland has had a national job evaluation plan since 1948 as a basis for its national wages and incomes policy. Sweden and Germany have a number of industry-wide plans. Great Britain, like the United States, usually employs job evaluation at the plant or company level. Australia and some Asian countries have installed some forms of job evaluation. Russia and some of the other Eastern European countries made wide use of job classification during the socialist era which have subsequently been carried forward.

Some advantages of job evaluation:

* It tries to link pay with the requirements of the job.

* It offers a systematic procedure for determining the relative worth of jobs. Jobs are ranked on the basis of rational criteria such as skill, education, experience, responsibilities, hazards, etc., and are priced accordingly.

* An equitable wage structure is a natural outcome of job evaluation. An unbiased job evaluation tends to eliminate salary inequities by placing jobs having similar requirements in the same salary range.

* Employees as well as unions participate as members of job evaluation committee while determining rate grades for different jobs. This helps in solving wage related grievances quickly.

A working, widely used system of job evaluation can be found in the Hay System, a proprietary job evaluation scheme produced by Hay Group. It was established in 1943 by Ned Hay and has been updated and developed in countries across the globe. Today, many types of organisation, operating in over 90 countries, use the Hay scheme to evaluate jobs. In the UK, the Hay scheme has been applied to public and private sector companies alike and other Universities have adopted it to establish a rank order of jobs and ensure equal pay for equal value.

The Hay System is described as an analytical, points based scheme, which aims to measure the relative size of jobs within an organisation. It looks at 3 basic elements and sub-elements of job content believed to be common to all jobs to one extent or another:

Knowledge and Experience

The total knowledge and skills developed by job experience, education and training, which are required to perform the job successfully.

– Technical Know-How

– Planning, Organising, Controlling

– Communicating and Influencing

Problem Solving

– Thinking Environment (the extent to which thinking is circumscribed by standards or covered by precedents)

– Thinking Challenge (the degree of creativity or original thought required; the degree of challenge presented by the thinking to be done)

Accountability

– Freedom to Act (measured by the existence or absence of constraints by managers, committees or established procedures or guidance)

– Area and Type of Impact (how much of the organization does the role impact upon and what is the nature of the impact).

Here is another working example, used throughout South Tyneside Council.

There are 13 factors that make up the job evaluation process.

1. Knowledge

This factor measures the knowledge that is required for the job and not any additional knowledge the jobholder may have that is not a job requirement. It will cover formal technical and professional qualifications, on and off the job training, numerical and literacy skills and tools and equipment.

2. Mental skills

This factor measures the mental skills that are required for the job. It includes problem solving, analytical and judgmental skills, sensory attention and concentration levels etc. It will also cover creative and developmental skills, e.g having an input into policy or protocol development.

3. Interpersonal skills

This factor concentrates on the interpersonal and communication skills that are required for the job. The interpersonal skills could include for example caring skills, identifying and responding to learners’ needs, motivational or counselling skills etc. The communication skills include oral, linguistic, written, and skills used for communication by sign language.

4. Physical skills

This factor measures the physical skills that are required for the job. These includes hand and eye co-ordination, manual dexterity, keyboard use, driving or physical skills required for any other activity which may require the use of any equipment or tools.

5. Initiative and independence

This factor measures the scope allowed to the jobholder to take independent actions and use their initiative. It also takes into account the level of supervision the job holder has. This factor considers the extent to which instructions, policies and procedures affect an individual’s scope to exercise the use of initiative in day to day working. It also considers the nature and level of supervision that is required for the job and whether the jobholder works alone or with others.

6. Physical demands

This factor measures the amount of physical effort that is required to undertake the job. It takes into account all forms of bodily effort e.g. standing, walking, lifting, carrying, pushing and pulling and would also include for example working in a constrained position and maintaining a required pace of work.

7. Mental demands

This factor measures the level and frequency of concentration, alertness and attention required by the job. It also takes into account areas of concentration that are more difficult e.g. the need to switch between various activities because of interruption or repetitive work. This factor measures mental attention, sensory attention and work related pressures associated with a typical working day. Mental attention could include carrying out calculations, interpreting documents or checking documents for accuracy etc. Sensory attention considers senses such as watching, looking, listening, touching and smelling. Work related pressures considers issues such as conflicting demands and unpredictable deadlines outside the control of the jobholder.

8. Emotional demands

This factor measures the emotional demands when working with people whose circumstances could cause emotional distress to the jobholder, such as working with terminally ill, very frail, homeless or abuse people. This could include subject matter as well as phone or person to person contact. These people would be those other than work colleagues and it would not include verbal abuse – this is covered later in the Working Conditions factor.

9. Responsibility for people

This factor measures the level of direct responsibility the jobholder has for others, this may be on an individual or group basis, and does not include the staff the employee will directly supervise. The factor will cover responsibilities including confidentiality requirements, for the well being of people (physical, social, economic, and environmental) through providing personal services advice including guidance. This factor looks at the jobholder’s responsibility to have a direct impact on the well-being of individuals or groups of people, through assisting the physical, mental, social, economic or environmental needs of those people who would not be supervised or managed by the jobholder. It also considers policy development and providing advice and guidance on people-related internal or external policies.

10. Responsibility for supervision

This factor looks at the level of direct supervision the post holder is responsible for; this includes staff co-ordination or management of employees. It includes work allocation and re-organisation, checking and assessing work. The emphasis is on the nature of the supervision rather than the number of employees supervised. This factor considers the jobholder’s direct responsibility for the supervision, training, co-ordination or management of employees, or others in an equivalent position such as volunteers, students on placement, trainees or contractors’ employees who report to the jobholder for supervision. It considers the jobholder’s responsibility for e.g. work allocation, checking of work etc.

11. Responsibility for financial resources

This factor considers the level of financial responsibility and or/authority the jobholder has. It takes into account handling cash, cheques, vouchers, processing of invoices, monitoring and setting budgets and income generation. It also considers long-term financial planning, policy development and providing advice and guidance on financial resources related internal or external policies.

12. Responsibility for physical resources

This factor measures the responsibility for physical resources a jobholder has for manual or electronic information, equipment, tools or machinery, vehicles, land, buildings fittings, stocks and supplies. It includes the responsibility for cleaning, maintaining, security, ordering of and adaptation to physical resources etc. It also includes policy development and providing advice and guidance on physical resources related internal or external policies.

13. Working conditions

This factor will cover the frequency, duration and nature of the working conditions the jobholder will encounter. These areas will cover unpleasant, uncomfortable, and hazardous conditions. Other conditions are vibration, direct and indirect exposure to bodily fluids, smoke, grease and oil. Hazardous weather conditions including inclement weather are also included. This factor covers the jobholder’s exposure to such as verbal abuse, aggression, disagreeable, uncomfortable, unpleasant and hazardous conditions, such as dust, dirt, extremes in temperatures confined spaces, smell, fumes, vibration, infestations, cramped conditions.

Civilization has already evolved, through necessity, a plethora of scales for the measurement of liquids and solids, distance, weight, heat, pressure and many others of a more scientific and specialized nature. If seriously considered, it may perhaps give cause for some surprise, that we have never yet established an accurate method of measuring work, though it is surely the most pivotal, the most widely employed commodity, the very foundation of all economic, commercial and productive activity.

2013

Summary assembled by

Michael Sartorius



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