How do you decide how much a job is worth? 2 ways–you can simply pull a figure off the top of your head and hope that it works or, you can conduct a job evaluation. Frankly, we will prefer you to do the latter as this is more effective. 

With a job evaluation, you can weigh the risks, value, and competencies required for a job, and leverage this data to decide on the right remuneration for the role. A job evaluation is one of the best ways to translate effort and skills into a healthy pay packet. 

What is Job Evaluation? 

Job evaluation is the process of assessing the worth of a job to decide on how much should be paid for it. During a job evaluation, a combination of factors is used to determine the relative worth of a job and how it compares to other jobs in the organization. 

Typically, job evaluation is conducted by the Human Resources or Personnel team in your organization; although in some cases, it can be done via self-assessment or peer review. When done correctly, it helps you to create a ranking order for the roles in your organization and develop a pay structure that is fair, equitable, and consistent for everyone.

Who Can Evaluate a Job?

• Management and HR

Usually, the HR team in an organization evaluates different job roles to arrive at the most appropriate reward for them. This process is well spelled out and often results in the establishment of a hierarchy for the different roles in the organization. 

The 4 major steps for job evaluation by management are Job assessment, job rating, money allocation, and employee classification. First, the evaluation officer carries out a job analysis where he or she studies the job description, responsibilities, and specifications. Next, the HR personnel rates the job using the assessment criteria and then assigns a score or value to it. 

Based on the information gathered,  a money rate is assigned to the job from the existing remuneration pay scale. After doing this, the HR officer creates a title for this job role and classifies existing employees and future employees based on the level of tasks they undertake in this role. 

• Colleague/Peers

As part of workplace peer review, employees working within the same team can carry out job evaluation. While this type of job evaluation may not be in-depth, it can provide useful insights when it is time for job evaluation by management. 

For example, during team bonding sessions, employees can discuss the high and low points of their job and if they feel like they are adequately compensated for the work that they do. Job evaluation by employees is mostly informal, unstructured, and spontaneous. 

The major advantage of job evaluation by employees is that it provides useful insights into the thoughts and expectations of your workforce. With this information, you can improve your workplace policies to boost organizational output and employee productivity. 

• Self-Assessment

Sometimes, job evaluation happens during a moment of introspection. At one point or the other; whether while you’re sitting at your work desk or simply having lunch, you must have caught yourself reflecting on your job and what it means for you. 

During self-assessment, the employee evaluates his or her job in terms of the workload, skills required for its execution, growth trajectory, and compensation. The outcome from self-assessment often spurs the employee to make a decision about the job; that is, whether to stay with your organization or look for other opportunities. 

Self-assessment is inherently subjective and so, it should not be the sole determiner of the value of a job. However, the outcome of self-assessment can trigger important conversations in the workplace that can improve your condition of service and productivity. 



When to Conduct Job Evaluation

Job evaluation should be conducted regularly; however, the frequency of this process is not cast in stone. This means that you should establish a job evaluation schedule that works best for your organization after considering all the important factors. 

Here are a few times you should consider a job evaluation in your organization:

• After a Project

After executing a new project and hitting some milestones, it may just be the right time to conduct a job evaluation. This is because, after a successful project, you may begin to see some jobs in a different light in terms of how important they are to the growth of your organization. 

• An Examination/Review

One of the best times to carry out a job evaluation is immediately after conducting employee reviews. Usually, organizations review employee performance in their job roles at stipulated times. Every employee review exercise provides new insights that are very useful for job evaluation. 

• Every Quarter

During quarterly review meetings in your organization, you can conduct a job evaluation for the different roles you have. Quarterly review meetings help you to stay on track with your goals for the corporate year and to make any short term changes that may be necessary. 

• Bi-Annually

Just like quarterly review meetings, your organization can choose to carry out job evaluation during its bi-annual performance assessment. The bi-annual organizational assessment is a strategic means of assessing your company’s performance for the 1st half of the year and outlining short-term goals for the next half. 

• Annually

End of the year meetings and annual general meetings in the workplace provides the right opportunity for job evaluation. During this meeting, organizations can assess employee performance, review current job roles, and update job rankings based on the insights gathered for the year. 

Features of a Job Evaluation 

1. Job evaluation solely depends on the internal factors that are peculiar to the organization in question. In other words, it is not influenced by external factors such as the workload or pay structure in another company. 
2. A job evaluation is largely subjective; even though it is carried out using a set of parameters. Hence, one of the goals of a job evaluation exercise should be ensuring that consistent judgments are made based on objectively assessed information.
3. During job evaluation, you need to separate the job from the individual to arrive at the best possible results. In other words, assess the job and not the person occupying the position.
4. Job evaluation measures facts, data, and insights that are verifiable. Always make use of verifiable information for your evaluation.
5. A job evaluation is not the sole determiner for an organization’s pay scale. While it can and should influence your decision, you should rely on other data sources like a salary survey to help you arrive at the best decision. 

How to Conduct Job Evaluation

• Have an Objective

Before carrying out a job evaluation, you must spell out what you want to achieve with the process. This should not be a problem because a job evaluation already has objectives that are intricate to the process. Thus, what you need to do is tailor these objectives to suit the peculiarities of your organization. 

• Know Who is Conducting it

After outlining the objectives of your job evaluation process, the next thing to do is decide who would take charge of the process. As we have already said, job evaluation can be done by the management team, employees, or self-assessment. 

The objectives of the process should inform your choice. For instance, if you want to create a new job hierarchy for the roles in your organization, then job evaluation by management is the best way to go about this. However, if you simply want to gather information on employees’ perceptions of job roles, then self-assessment or peer evaluation can be a good place to start. 

• Design Questionnaires Based on Objective

A questionnaire or survey is one of the tools for job assessment and you can create this with online or paper forms. The choice of you or survey design plus the type of questions listed in your job evaluation form must reflect the objectives of the assessment process.  

• Have a Rating System

Create a rubric for the job evaluation exercise. A rubric is simply a rating system that specifies the criteria and guidelines for job evaluation. Having a rating system is important because it creates a standardized procedure and reduces evaluation bias that can affect the validity of the process. 

15 Top Job Evaluation Form Questions 

• HR/Management

1. How does this job role sit within the organizational structure?
2. To what extent does this work help the organization achieve its objectives?
3. Does the job role require any special skills or training for execution?
4. How important are the results of this role to the overall success of the organization?
5. How much investment is required for this role?

• Peer Evaluation

1. How important do you think this role is to the organization?
2. Do you think this role is challenging?
3. Do you think this job received adequate compensation?
4. How risky would you say this job role is?
5. Does this job require any special skills or qualifications? 

• Self-Assessment

1. What is the most challenging aspect of this job for you?
2. Do you think your remuneration is adequate for the job role?
3. How challenging is this role for you?
4. On a scale of 1-10, how well does the job communicate the goals and strategies of the organization?
5. Do you require any special skills or training to perform well in this role? 

Importance of Job Evaluation 

1. Job evaluation is one of the most objective methods of ranking and grading job roles in an organization. 
2. This process helps organizations to adopt new job roles to existing organizational structures. 
3. It plays an important role in the determination of a suitable compensation scale for different roles within the organization.
4. When job evaluation is done in the right way it helps the organization to achieve wage fairness and job equity. 
5. Job evaluation also ensures a fair distribution of rewards in the workplace. This means that a job role would be rewarded based on the employees’ output, skills, and competencies needed for execution and other integral factors. 
6. Job evaluation, especially through peer and self-assessments, is a good way for the organization to measure workplace satisfaction. It also allows employees to communicate any grievances they have with regards to job compensation.
7. It imposes transparency on the organization’s welfare and reward system. Since everyone in the organization is familiar with the assessment criteria, they would fully understand why the organization places some job roles over others. This improves workplace attitudes and leads to better organizational outcomes. 
8. Job evaluation provides a rational basis for establishing base compensation for the whole hierarchy of jobs in an organization by ascertaining their relative worth.
9. Job evalua­tion is a valuable method that organizations can use to maintain internal and external transparency in their salary structure.
10. The data gathered via job evaluation can help organizations improve their processes, leading to better performance and results. 

Conclusion

Without any doubt, every organization must prioritize job evaluation as it is a major ingredient for objective decision making. Understanding job evaluation can help establish standard procedures for your organization while avoiding pitfalls that can be detrimental to the success of your team. 

While conducting job evaluation, be sure to avoid the common pitfall of carrying out a performance appraisal instead. In other words, focus on the worry of the job, in itself, and do not allow the performance of the employee who is assigned the job role, to influence your evaluation.