Principles of Job Evaluation

Job evaluation as evident from the word itself aims at evaluating the job and not the person. It is a process of evaluating and determining the value of the job for an organisation. The evaluation is always in relative and not absolute terms. The idea is evaluate a certain job against other jobs in the organisation so that a fair compensation system against various bands or levels can be established.

Organisations use various ways to evaluate jobs for arriving upon a compensation scheme. They vary with the size of the organisation and the kind of industry they operate in. Job ranking, pair comparison and benchmarking are the various ways of evaluation.

The simpler or the easiest to perform is the job ranking method. In this method the jobs are taken as a whole and ranked against each other. The jobs are ordered according to perceived seniority. Such method is easier to apply in a small organisation but gets complicated once used for large corporations.

The other method is the pair comparison method where jobs are compared in pairs. It is more structured approach to comparing jobs. Yet another method is benchmarking where certain jobs are slotted and then examined in detail. These are then used as benchmarks in evaluating various jobs.

In addition Point Factor Analysis is also used to evaluate various jobs. The method is an old and tested one. In this method jobs are broken down into various factors such as skills required, experience, education required. A set of questions is framed against each factor and the response determines the score. Each factor is allotted a certain weight.

Principles of Job Evaluation

• Definition: Jobs must be clearly defined such that they are identifiable and easily distinguishable. These jobs must then be part of the job description.

• Evaluation: A job evaluation scheme must be arrived upon and used as a standard and all jobs in the organisation must be evaluated as per that scheme only.

• Job Understanding: Job evaluators need to have deep insights into the job design process. They must have a methodical understanding of various tasks involved.

• Concern: Job evaluation must be concerned with the job and not with the person. i.e. it is the job that has to be evaluated and not the person

• Assessment: The assessment has to be carried out in an acceptable manner and by competent people. Further, it is based on judgement and is not scientific but can however be used to make objective judgements if used correctly.

With organisations changing continuously in every sphere of operations, be it the way they conduct their business, they way they hire and manage people, there is a huge change in the processes that drive this change. Job evaluation and its technique are not immune to it. The techniques are changing very fast. There are organisations still that stick to existing schemes of job evaluation. Evaluations based upon old existent standards are time consuming in many cases. Organisations do not want to spend time on writing new jobs and making evaluations afresh. Those that do this may need to rethink!