Job evaluation when Done Rightly
Job Evaluation is often perceived as a complicated process to grade jobs.
However, its use extends far beyond grading. A well-designed job evaluation framework forms the foundation for strategic alignment, performance management, pay equity and transparency. A good framework ensures that jobs are appropriately compensated based on their criticality and complexity within the context of organisational priorities. An accurate and fair assessment helps determine the relative worth of jobs. This results in aligning the organisation's grading philosophy to its priorities.
One drawback of most Job Evaluation frameworks is their lack of alignment with the organisation’s strategy, goals, missions and values. All of these are equally important in driving actions and behaviours that result in success while keeping the culture intact. Most job evaluation frameworks are generic and ignore the organisational context partially or totally. Poorly defined job evaluation structures lead to arbitrariness in an organisation's design, performance and pay practices.
Another major drawback of many suboptimal frameworks is the lack of dynamism. Static job evaluation frameworks can rightly seem inadequate. These frameworks assume the fixedness of organisational objectives. This fixedness in organisational practices can be detrimental in rapidly evolving business conditions.
Research in organisational effectiveness shows that organisations with optimal levels of alignment of strategy to practices are likelier to succeed. It is therefore a no-brainer that job evaluation frameworks should be customised to suit your organisation’s context- its unique stage, vision, goals, values and practices.
In addition to this, job evaluation factors should be static enough to allow for the evaluation process to be a non-invasive one but dynamic enough to account for the transitory nature of business and talent cycles.
In order to tighten your job evaluation framework, here’s what your people and culture specialists should do -
Work with your internal or external specialists to redefine the framework to customise It to your organisation’s goals, values and context. An effective job evaluation framework is optimised to work for your organisation. Many external consultants are incentivised to force-fit generic frameworks in diverse organizational contexts. Your people specialists should be able to support the creation of custom frameworks. If building a custom framework from scratch sounds intimidating they should at least be able to customise an existing framework to your needs.
Ensure that job evaluation factors comprise both fixed and moving factors. Fixed factors are expected to stay stable for 2-4 years while Moving factors will stay relevant only for a few months to a year. Insights on the dynamism of factors can be gained through effective performance management and competency assessment practices.
Keep job-related data up-to-date at all times. Tasks, responsibilities, competencies and qualifications related to jobs should be accurate and should stay updated at all times. To achieve this, effective nudges to managers and employees are as critical as regular reviews of all job information within the organisation.
Be great advocates of the importance of effective job evaluation within the organisation. Important organisation practices involve the meaningful involvement of employees, managers and leaders. Even if your job evaluation framework and practices are adequately optimised for your context, they will need effective implementation to work. Effective implementation will rest on your people and culture department’s ability to ensure buy-in.
Here’s what you need to do to ensure that your people and culture team is adequately supported to drive the right job evaluation practices -
Budget adequately for the right digital tools. Investing in the right tools will help drive effectiveness and save costs in the medium-to-long term by automating key processes that are cumbersome to drive manually. The right digital tools can also enhance user adoption and establish data pipelines that were otherwise being ignored.
Invest in your people (HR) teams to boost their understanding of jobs within the organisation. Encourage the usage of digital tools as much as possible to visualise job data and characteristics within the organisations.
Establish the right incentives to drive the right leader-sponsorship behaviours. Your leaders should be able to sustain the effectiveness and fairness of job evaluation practices beyond the implementation phase.
If you invest wisely and consciously in analysing how work is done in your organisation and how it contributes to success, you can be more strategic around resource allocation. Effective job evaluation practices are key to achieving this!
