Job
evaluation is flourishing in the UK in spite of the case made against it by
some commentators that it is bureaucratic, inflexible, time-consuming and
inappropriate in today’s organisations.
This
is the main conclusion to emerge from the largest survey in this field in
recent years, conducted by e-reward.co.uk, the reward management website.
The
survey found that 44 per cent of respondents currently use formal job
evaluation techniques. But what is most striking is that 45 per cent of those
without a scheme intend to introduce one. Only 5 per cent of respondents had
abandoned job evaluation.
Job
evaluation is much more 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.
Michael
Armstrong, managing partner at e-reward.co.uk, said: "Far from dying out,
new job evaluation schemes are providing the foundation for major changes to
pay structures in the NHS and local government designed to address equal pay
and single-status issues. Both the higher and further education sectors have
developed job evaluation schemes recently. There is no indication that job
evaluation is in decline, quite the opposite as this
survey
shows."
"The
emergence of the concept of broadbanding with its claim that it no longer
depended on conventional job evaluation helped to increase doubts about job
evaluation.
"However,
this hostility has been reduced more recently by a more general recognition of
the importance of achieving equity through a systematic approach to valuing
jobs, coupled with the increased focus on equal pay and the recognition that
analytical job evaluation was an essential element in achieving equality."
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