Posted by Cathryn Edmondson on 14 May 2021
Three questions to assess if your JE scheme is fit for purpose
A robust job evaluation framework can add value to a business in many ways by ensuring roles are treated fairly and by acting as a foundation to other people practices such as performance management, succession planning, talent development and reward frameworks. However, a job evaluation framework that is not fit for purpose will do more damage than good. So here are three key questions to help determine if your job evaluation framework is fit for purpose:
1. Is your job evaluation framework understood within the business?
We have clients who choose to make their full framework visible to employees and we have other clients who prefer only to share aspects of the framework but regardless of which approach favoured, the most successful frameworks are where employees, particularly line managers, understand what the framework means to them.
Employees need to understand what it means if their role is at Core level or Translate level, grade B or C. If not, then they might jump to all sorts of conclusions. A typical misunderstanding is that a higher grade will lead to a pay rise. This can lead to employees or line managers campaigning to inflate grades in a way to drive pay increases, causing a lot of additional work and stress for all involved. In some cases, pay and job evaluation are explicitly linked but more often the link is not that linear. The number of levels in a framework can also be a challenge. It can be tempting when designing a job evaluation framework to include a large number of levels to gain the granularity to distinguish between roles at different levels. However, this can make it difficult to articulate to difference between the levels, making it difficult for employees to understand and for line managers to explain which can result in a lack of trust in the process.
Working with line managers so they understand the framework, what the levels mean and how it links to other people process such as pay decisions, benefits and career development enables them to in turn explain it to their employees. This means line managers can address questions and misconceptions directly, helping embed the framework as a business process and prevent job evaluation being viewed as just a HR process.
2. Are you confident your JE framework is free of bias?
An analytical job evaluation framework that has been tested to ensure it is free of bias will provide a defence against equal pay claims, but having confidence that your job evaluation framework is free of bias should be about more than providing legal defence. Whether it be an off the shelf or a bespoke framework, a robust analytical framework demonstrates to your employees that you take fairness seriously and gives them confidence that how roles are sized is based on a consistent process that is not influenced by gender, ethnicity or other protected characteristics.
It is also important to carry out checks and balances to ensure fairness and consistency in how the framework is interpreted. Some clients chose to use panels but this can be resource intensive and not always practical. Using the reporting functionality built into tools such as our Evaluate platform provides oversight of evaluation outcomes to ensure that even if there are multiple evaluators, consistency is maintained. For instance, our Evaluate methodology easily identifies roles of equal value even across different departments or business entities so you can be confident staff are treated fairly.
3. Has the job evaluation framework and process kept pace with changes to the organisation?
Businesses change over time and what was relevant in the past isn’t always relevant for the present or the future. Deciding to change a well-embedded job evaluation framework is no small decision but if your framework is already showing signs of being out of date, tinkering around the edges may only delay the inevitable. The impact of an out-of-date job evaluation framework could be much more significant than the short-term challenge of putting in a more relevant future proofed framework. Dated frameworks can result in descriptions becoming less applicable or even whole factors becoming difficult to evaluate making them open to interpretation and therefore the consistency and fairness the framework is designed to provide is lost.
In some cases, it can be the process that becomes dated rather than the framework itself. The speed at which businesses need to adapt is increasing, as demonstrated during this pandemic. Therefore, the process of evaluating a role needs to support the agility needed by the business to adapt and keep pace with change, not work against it. Evaluating a role needs to be a robust and thorough process but this must be balanced by practicality and agility.
If you would like to know more about Job Evaluation, sign up to our upcoming webinar, or to discuss job evaluation at your organisation, or any other aspect of pay and reward, please email enquiries@innecto.com or call 020 3457 0894 to speak to a consultant.
