Job evaluation is a way for organisations to measure and compare jobs. The aim is to evaluate the job and not the jobholder to enable a comparison to be made objectively.

Job evaluation has several uses:

• Helps to decide pay and provides a grade for each job.
• Supposed to ensure that pay is fair and equal.
• Helps to decide which benefits are paid, such as bonuses or fuel allowances.
• Compares pay structures between organisations.
• Helps to review jobs after mergers, acquisitions or other major changes.

Types of job evaluation scheme

There are two types of job evaluation, analytical and non-analytical.

ANALYTICAL: Jobs are broken down into their individual components or demands. These are called factors and each factor is given a score. The scores ranked for each job. Analytical job evaluation schemes can provide a defence to an equal pay claim.

NON-ANALYTICAL: Whole jobs are compared to one another. A hierarchy of jobs is then produced in a manner which feels fairest in the minds of the organisation’s managers. These schemes are more vulnerable to equal pay claims because there is no scoring system to provide evidence for the job ranking. Decisions about job ranking are usually made by a manager and this often results in female jobs being scored lower than male jobs.

A non-analytical scheme does not provide a defence against an equal pay claim. There is also no guarantee you are being paid fairly under an analytical scheme if there is no evidence that the scheme is free from gender bias.

Challenging job evaluation

There are certain things to be wary of which may indicate a flaw with your organisation’s job evaluation scheme. Any one of these may provide grounds to make an equal pay claim.

BAD SCHEMES

A scheme can be accused of gender bias if more women have been affected by it than men. If women have fallen down the pay grades more often than men then this can be challenged.

WRONG JOB INFORMATION

The scheme may not take into account or devalues an important part of a woman’s job (i.e. a missing factor). Conversely, the scheme might place greater value on factors found in male jobs.

BAD JUDGEMENTS

A factor for women may receive fewer points than a factor for men when it should be judged as the same. An example would be mental concentration (a factor found in more female jobs) versus physical effort (a factor found in more male jobs). It can be argued under these circumstances that the judgements made are inaccurate

POOR COMMUNICATIONS

Your employer may not have provided enough information about job evaluation, why they are doing it, or the outcomes. You may not understand how your job is being evaluated or whether all jobs are being evaluated in the same way.