Job Evaluation

What is Job Evaluation?

Job evaluation is a methodical strategy to gauge how valuable a certain position is in comparison to others within an organization. The goal of job evaluation is to develop a framework for comparing the worth of various jobs so that there is some basis for how pay are determined for distinct roles.

The need for job evaluation

Why is it necessary for our organization to employ these methods of job evaluation?

Job evaluations should be conducted periodically for the following reasons:

• Workflow integration with new technology
• greater responsibility being placed on workers
• Reorganization of the business 
• Modifications to the policies and practices
• shifts in the workload or job descriptions
• Promotions
• fresh positions

The factors mentioned above can affect how a specific job is carried out and what value is attached to that job.

Advancements in technology could reduce the workload of your employees. It frees up time to direct other responsibilities, demanding a corresponding change in pay.

Increased tenure and responsibilities demand regular evaluations of job to ensure employee satisfaction. If responsibilities and tenure continue, you’ve retained, and the person stayed for appreciable reasons.

In some cases, the entire organization goes through some restructuring. This can mean that some people are doing less than before while others are doing more work than before.

All this calls for evaluation of jobs to ensure that everyone gets what they deserve and that the company is also getting the most bang for its buck.

In some cases, employees may even request that their job be reassessed and that their pay grades be re-evaluated. For example, one of the reasons for a pay increase could be that the employee has taken on more duties.

Another reason could be that they have been given more authority in that position and, thus, more responsibility.

Job Evaluation Meaning

Job evaluation is the procedure of examining and estimating several jobs respectively to ensure their relative worth in an organization.

JE is an estimation of the relative worth of different jobs on the basis of their nature, requirements and personnel factors, such as qualification and skills required.

JE is a system wherein a particular job of an enterprise is compared with its other jobs. In present industrial era, there are different types of jobs which are performed in every business and industrial enterprise.

Comparative study of these jobs is very essential because on the basis of such study the structure of wages for different types of jobs is prepared.

The comparison of jobs may may be made on the basis of different factors such as duties, responsibilities, working conditions efforts, etc.

Job Evaluation Definitions by Authors

Job evaluation represents an effort to determine the relative value of every job in a plant and to determine what the fair basic wage for such job should be.

“Kimball and Kimball Jr”

Job evaluation may be defined as an attempt to determine and compare the demands which the normal performance of a particular job makes on normal workers without taking account of the individual abilities or performance of the workers concerned.

“International Labor Organization”

Job evaluation is the evaluation or rating of job to determine their positions in the job hierarchy. The evaluation may be achievement through assignment of points or the use of some other systematic rating method for essential job requirements such as skill, experience, and responsibility.

“Bureau of Labor Statistics”

Job evaluation as a personal term has both a specific and genetic meaning specifically, it means job rating or the grading of occupations in terms of duties; generally it means the entire field of wages and salary administration along modern lines.

“Bethel, Atwater and Smith”

A process of determining the relative worth of the various jobs within the organisation so that differential wages may be paid to jobs of different worth.

“Wendell French”

Features of Job Evaluation

• It helps the organization to sustain advanced level of employee productivity and employee satisfaction.
• It helps in substantiating system by reduction of numbers of different and separate rates.It does not compose the wage structure.
• A group of experts performs the process of job evaluation rather than the individuals.
• It helps in assessing the value of job. Further the aspects (like skills and responsibilities) values are also studied in connection with the job.
• It simply attempts to determine the jobs not people.
• When the job analysis is done, what we found as an output is job evaluation.

Job Evaluation Schemes

There are two basic types of JE schemes: analytical and non-analytical.

Analytical Schemes

An analytical JE scheme can defend against a claim of equal pay for work of equal value. 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.

Non-analytical Schemes

Under this scheme, whole jobs are compared with each other. There is no attempt to break the jobs down and analyze them under their various demands or components.

The rationale for non-analytical JE is that it produces a hierarchy of jobs that approximate the ‘felt-fair’ ranking of these jobs in the minds of the people working in the organization.

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.

A non-analytical JE scheme does not provide us with a defense against a claim of equal pay for work of equal value.

Process of Job Evaluation Program

The Job evaluation program is a process involving a few steps.

1. Gaining acceptance
2. Creating a job evaluation committee
3. Finding the jobs to be evaluated
4. Analyzing and preparing a job description
5. Selecting the method of evaluation
6. Classifying jobs

Gaining acceptance

Before undertaking job evaluation, top management must explain the aims and uses of the program to the employees and unions.

To elaborate on the program further, oral presentations could be made. Letters and booklets could be used to classify all relevant aspects of the job evaluation program.

Creating a job evaluation committee

A single person can’t evaluate all the key jobs in an organization. Usually, a job evaluation committee consisting of experienced employees, union representatives, and HR experts is created to set the ball rolling.

Finding the jobs to be evaluated

Every job need not be evaluated. This may be too taxing and costly. Certain key jobs in each department may be identified. While picking up the jobs, care must be taken to ensure that they represent the type of work performed in that department.

Analyzing and preparing a job description

This requires the preparation of a job description and also an analysis of job needs for successful performance.

Selecting the method of evaluation

The most important method of evaluating the jobs must be identified now, keeping the job factors and organizational demands in mind.

Classifying jobs

The relative worth of various jobs in an organization may be found out after arranging jobs in order of importance using criteria such as skill requirements, experience needed under which conditions the job is performed, type of responsibilities to be shouldered, degree of supervision needed, the amount of stress caused by the job, etc

Weights can be assigned to each such factor. A job’s worth is determined when we add all the weights. The points may then be converted into monetary values.

Advantages of Job Evaluation

Job Evaluation is advantageous to management, workers, trade unions and organisations as well.

Management has the advantage of greater order in its pay arrangement and more stable wage structure. Unions benefit from a greater sense of fairness and reasons in pay matters.

Union can play a more important role in determining the relation between different levels of pay and in the joint regulation of work place conditions.

Employees benefit because job evaluation provides an agreed framework for setting questions affecting jobs and so helps to prevent arbitrary decisions.

It also helps to ensure that differences in skill and responsibility are properly recognized. Everyone benefits from a system which enables the pay for new and revised jobs to be settled in the same way as for existing job by preventing anomalies.

Limitations of Job Evaluation

The main limitations of JE are;

1. JE is not exactly scientific. It is a systematic and not scientific technique of rewarding the job. It lacks scientific precision because all factors cannot be measured accurately.
2. Most of the techniques are difficult to understand, even for the supervisors.
3. The factors taken by the program are not exhaustive.
4. There may be wide fluctuations in compensate factors given changes in technology, values, aspirations of employers, etc.
5. Employees, trade union leaders, management, and program operators may assign different weights to different factors, thus creating grounds for dispute.
6. The trade unions regard job evaluation with suspicion because it is made on certain principles, and the results are generally ignored. Some of the methods of job evaluation are not easily understood by workers. Workers fear that job evaluation will do away with collective bargaining.
7. A job evaluation scheme takes a long time to install. It requires specialized personnel, and it is costly.
8. Too many factors are used in job evaluation, and there is no standard list of factors to be considered. Definitions of factors vary from organization to organization. Many types of research show that the factors used are not independently valued. It gives more reliance on internal standards and evaluation for fixing wage rates.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that job evaluation is not an exact science. It is a technique that can help avoid several anomalies in wages that cause so many heart burns and disgust today, provided it is used sensibly and is not pressed beyond its proper limits.