What Job Evaluation Is and Is Not

Job evaluation is a systematic way to decide the relative size of jobs inside one organisation. "Size" here means the demands a job makes: the knowledge it needs, the problems it must solve, the decisions it is accountable for, the relationships it must manage and the conditions it is done in. The result is an order of jobs, from the smallest to the largest, that people can explain and check.

This order is then used to place each job into a grade. A grade is a group of jobs of broadly similar size that are treated the same way for pay and conditions. Together, the grades form a grade structure. Job evaluation is the method; grading is what you build with its results.

The key phrase is internal equity: jobs of similar size inside the organisation are treated similarly, and differences between jobs can be explained by the demands of the work, not by history, habit or who negotiated hardest.

Why organisations evaluate jobs

• Fairness people can see. Staff accept differences in pay more easily when they can see the reason.
• Consistent decisions. New jobs and changed jobs are graded by the same rules, not by whoever is in the room.
• Equal pay for work of equal value. A well-designed analytical scheme is the main way to show that different jobs of equal demand are treated equally.
• A clear structure. Grades give a framework for career paths, organisation design and pay budgets.

Example. A logistics company of 400 people had grown by acquisition. It had three different "Team Leader" jobs, each paid differently, because each came from a different company. Nobody could explain the difference. A job evaluation exercise showed that two of the jobs were the same size and one was larger, because it also managed a budget and a night shift. The company could now explain and defend the grades.