Showing posts with label Job Evaluation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Job Evaluation. Show all posts

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Steps Involve in job evaluation

Steps in job evaluation

1.Introduce the concept of job evaluation.

2.Obtain management approval for the evaluation.

3.Train the job evaluation selection team.

4.Review and select the job evaluation method.

5.Gather information on all internal jobs.

6.Use information to fully expand job descriptions.

7.Use the selected job evaluation method to rank jobs hierarchically or in groups.

8.Link the ranked jobs with your compensation system or develop a new system.

9.Implement the job evaluation and compensation systems.

10.Periodically review your job evaluation system and the resulting compensation decisions.

Job Evaluation Implement

Implement job evaluation

The concept of job evaluation often can be intimidating to employees in an established organization. Employees might worry about losing their jobs, and pay might be decreased after job comparisons and evaluations are completed. To help employees accept and understand your job evaluation system, approach job evaluation from an organizational development perspective.

Create a team

To promote widespread support, understanding, and acceptance across your organization, create a cross-functional team to work on job evaluation. The team should represent various levels and jobs within your organization.

Select the job evaluation method

The team can work together to evaluate and select a job evaluation method. Train team members in the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act and any other best practices for selecting a job evaluation method for your organization.

Communicate with employees

During the implementation of job evaluation, regularly communicate with employees throughout the process. This helps employees feel a sense of ownership from the results of the job evaluation results.

Disadvantage of Job Evaluation

One disadvantage of the method is its use of "universal" factors. Although, as mentioned it is quite possible for an organization to develop its own compoundable factors, factor comparison uses factors with common definitions for all jobs. This means using the same factors for all job families.

The definition of key jobs may be another disadvantage. A major criterion of a key job in factor comparison is the essential correctness of its pay rate. Since key jobs form the basis of the job-comparison scale, the usefulness of the scale depends on the anchor points represented by these jobs. But jobs change, sometimes imperceptibly. When jobs change and when wage rates change over time, the scale must be rebuilt accordingly. Otherwise users are basing their decisions on what might be described as a warped ruler.

The use of monetary units may represent a disadvantage if, as is likely, raters are influenced by whether a job is high-paid or low-paid. An unnecessary possibility of bias would seem to be present when raters use the absolute value of jobs to determine their relative position in the hierarchy.

Finally, the complexity of factor comparison may be a serious disadvantage. Its many complicated steps make it difficult to explain and thus affect its acceptance.
developing a point plan is complex. There are no universal factors, so these must be developed. Then degree statements must be devised for each of the factors chosen. All this takes time and money. Further, point plans take time to install. Each job must be rated on the scale for each factor, usually by several raters, and the results must be summarized and agreed to. Considerable clerical work is involved in recording and collating all these ratings. Much of this time and cost, however, can be reduced by using a ready-made plan.
Job classification is subjective, so jobs mightfall into several categories. Decisions rely on the judgment of the job evaluator. Job evaluators must evaluate jobs carefully because similar titles might describe different jobs from different work sites.
Subjective decisions about compensable factors and the associated points assigned might be dominate. The job evaluator must be aware of biases and ensure that they are not represented in points assigned to jobs that are traditionally held by minority and female employees.
Compensable factor comparison is a time-consuming and subjective process.

Advantage of Job Evaluation

1. Job Evaluation is a logical and, to some extent,an objective method of ranking jobs relative to one another.It will help in removing inequalities in a plant or industry.
2. In case of New Jobs, the method often facilitates fitting them into the existing wage structure.
3. The method helps in removing grievances arising out of relative wages, and it improve labour management relation and workers morale.
4. The method replaces the many accidental factor,occurring in less systematic procedure of wage bargaining by more impersonal and objective standards, thus establishing a clear basis for negotiations.
5. The method may lead to greater uniformity in wage rates,thus simplifying wage administration.
6. The the information collected in the process of job description and analysis may also be used for the improvement of selection, transfer and promotion procedures on the basis of comparative job requirement.

Job Evaluation Requirements

We will now explore how these evaluation requirements are met using this method.

1) Job Understanding


The basic information on the facts of the job is obtained by means of a job description. Job descriptions must meet the company’s requirements of clarity, comprehensives and consistency with other descriptions. The job holder and his or her immediate boss should have discussed and agreed a final version. This information is supplemented by the knowledge and understanding of the organization and how it works supplied by the Evaluation Committee. Through discussion each Committee member can then develop a common understanding of what a job involves before making judgments about its size.
2) Judgments

Evaluation is concerned with making judgments and in order to maximize the objectivity of these judgments, disciplines are built into the evaluation process. These are :

Systematic Framework : This is provided by the Guide Charts so that for each judgment to be made there is a definition of the levels to be selected. Thus discussion focuses upon matching information on job content with these definitions. This provides a basis for the discussion rather than relying upon strong personalities to sway the judgment.

Multiple Judgments : The evaluation process makes use of a committee. This enables individuals bias to be neutralized by the presence of others who will require individuals to substantiate their judgments.
Consensus : The aim is always to achieve a consensus view on the evaluation. This means that there is no facility for averaging or voting, but rather the different views of the committee members are exposed and explored and individuals required to substantiate their views. Discussion then continues until all views have been explored and the judgment which is recorded is that .

Criteria for Assessing Job Content


It is very difficult to compare jobs in total in order to assess their size, particularly if the jobs are very different. Therefore a number of common criteria are required to enable these comparisons to be made. The criteria used in the method follows from extensive study of common elements found in all jobs and are based on what results the job is required to achieve and what job-holders are required to bring to their jobs.
4) Scale of Measurement

While a simple ranking order establishes a ‘pecking order’ the use of a points scale
provides :

- a result which is instantly and widely recognizable.

- the establishment of distances between jobs

- the ability to make comparisons with jobs in other organizations using the same evaluation method.

The actual numbers used in the Guide Charts are chosen to give conveniently sized numbers which do not require fractions and do not give numbers in millions. All organizations using the method use the same numbering pattern.
5) Cross Checks on the Evaluations
Because evaluation is not scientific, it is necessary to provide checks on the consistency of the evaluation results. These may be necessary :

* between different functions
* overtime as the evaluation proceeds
* between different committees where more than one evaluation
committee is involved in evaluating jobs within the organization.

The method of job evaluation contains two separate and independent checks on the evaluations :

(i) Profile Check

This is a check on the technical soundness of each evaluation as it is carried out. It is based upon the fact that the nature of jobs within organizations varies. Some jobs are much more about Know-How and Problem-solving, such as research jobs and backroom jobs, while others are much more about Accountability, the results and actions oriented jobs, which are the ‘line’ jobs. Others will fall between these extremes – namely the ‘staff’ jobs. The ‘Profile’ check looks at the relationship between the Know-How, Problem-Solving and Accountability elements of the evaluation.

With a little practice, evaluation committee members become very adept at assessing the sort of ‘profile’ different jobs will show and this becomes a very powerful evaluation check. How this works is considered in more detail later.
(ii) Overall Review

Once a number of jobs have been evaluated they are ranked in descending order of job size,
and the resulting hierarchy examined. If the relationships do not appear to be consistent or to
make sense the evaluations are re-examined. Reviews should be an on-going process.

The Guide Charts are written so that the definitions of the elements cover jobs in a wide variety of functions and organizations. They therefore have to be interpreted sensitively within the context of jobs in your company. The following section explains how the definitions apply, but real understanding can only be obtained by experience in evaluating jobs with the company.

Principles Of Job Evaluation

Job evaluation is not scientific – it cannot be since there is no way of scientifically measuring jobs. It is therefore a process of judgment. The ‘correctness’ of the results it provides can only be assessed in terms of their acceptability to the vast majority of people to whom they apply.

The key to such success lies in guiding the judgment made about jobs within a process which is systematic and minimizes the subjectivity of the results, ensuring they are as objectives and justifiable as possible. To do this there are certain requirements which must be met :

1. An understanding of the job must be achieved.
2. Judgments must be made about the size of each job.
3. Common criteria are needed to assess the job content.
4. A common scale of measurement is required against which to make judgments.
5. Cross-checks are needed to ensure that the judgments are sound.
6. Rate the Job not the Man.
7. The elements should be clearly defined and properly selected.
Additionally there are a number of basic principles which are important, and underlie the whole process of job evaluation :

(i) Evaluation is concerned with the job not the person performing it. This is very basic, but much easier to say than to achieve in practice. The reason for this is that often those evaluating the jobs will know (perhaps quite well) the actual job holder. Such knowledge should not be used. It is useful to imagine the job being performed – not by the present job holder but by a replacement who performs all aspects of the job acceptability.
(ii) Evaluation is based on Job Content which means that in making evaluation judgments we must be concerned with what the job has to do and achieve. Thus two dangers have to be avoided :

· the judgment on the job size must not be influenced by job titles which can be misleading, or by knowledge of present status and pay

· the jobs are evaluated as they are not as they could be, should be, might be or used to be. It would be wrong to construct a ‘model’ organization and evaluate that, rather than the reality of the organization as it is.

(iii) Since evaluation is concerned solely with organizational reality, care should be given to evaluate jobs at a fully acceptable standard of performance: they should not reflect good or poor performance of current job holders, but what is properly required by the job to achieve organizational effectiveness.

Job Evaluation

Job evaluation is a practical technique, designed to enable trained and experienced staff to judge the size of one job relative to others. It does not directly determine pay levels, but will establish the basis for an internal ranking of jobs.

The two most common methods of job evaluation that have been used are first, whole job ranking, where jobs are taken as a whole and ranked against each other. The second method is one of awarding points for various aspects of the job. In the points system various aspects or parts of the job such as education and experience required to perform the job are assessed and a points value awarded - the higher the educational requirements of the job the higher the points scored. The most well known points scheme was introduced by Hay management consultants in 1951. This scheme evaluates job responsibilities in the light of three major factors - know how, problem solving and accountability.
Job Evaluation; the methods and practices of ordering jobs or positions with respect to their value or worth to the organization.
"Job Evaluation is a method which help to establish a justified rank order of jobs as a whole being a foundation for the setting of wages.Job Evaluation is the only one of the starting points for establishing the relative differentiation of base wage rate"