Job
evaluation is flourishing in the UK with more than 40 per cent of organisations
using the process and nearly half of those which don’t, planning to introduce
it.
Formal
job evaluation is a systematic process for establishing the relative worth of jobs
within an organisation.
An
e-reward.co.uk survey of HR and reward professionals reveals that 44 per cent
of organisations already use job evaluation and that 45 per cent of those
without a scheme intend to introduce one in the near future.
Job
evaluation is most widespread in the public and voluntary sectors, where it is
used by 68 per cent of organisations, which compares with 39 per cent in the
private sector. Only 5 per cent of respondents had abandoned job evaluation.
The
majority of the 236 respondents (55 per
cent) say they had introduced their job evaluation scheme five years
previously, although 19 per cent reveal that their scheme has been in use for a
year or less.
Two-thirds
of respondents who operate job evaluation use it for all jobs in the
organisation. Computer-assisted job evaluation has yet to gain broad appeal
with only 28 per cent of respondents using computerised systems. The main
application for computer technology is the calculation of job evaluation
scores.
The
survey revealed some misgivings about the process. A quarter of respondents say
job evaluation has inhibited flexibility in their organisation, 19 per cent
believe it is over-bureaucratic and 14 per cent feel it is too time-consuming.
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Just
over a third report their scheme has decayed over time and been misused. The
average number of ‘factors’ used in job evaluation is seven. The most
frequently mentioned factors are impact, knowledge and skills, communications
and contacts.
