Job evaluation is the process of putting into words and numbers what different jobs actually entail—an important foundation for ensuring equal pay for equal work. But how do you ensure that the assessment is conducted using a fair standard—without relying on gut feelings or personal opinions? We’ve listed our best tips.
This is part of our blog series on pay equity analysis in practice. In this series, we share concrete tips and best practices for those who want to get the most out of Pay Equity Compass—the tool that makes it easy to get everything right when it comes to pay equity analysis and pay transparency. Read the other parts here.
The Basics: evaluating the work—not the person
Before we dive into strategies for success, it’s good to start with the basics. And for those of you already familiar with pay equity analysis, this is hardly news: the whole point of job evaluation is that it’s the job that should be assessed, not the person performing it.
This means you should focus on the role’s requirements and level of difficulty, not on the employee’s performance, commitment, experience, or how difficult the role is to fill. It may sound obvious on paper, but in practice, these factors can easily become blurred.
After all, a manager often knows their team well and understands how important their work is on a day-to-day basis. That knowledge is, of course, valuable in many contexts, but it can also make it harder to maintain the objectivity required when evaluating different jobs against one another. The risk is simply that certain roles are overvalued, while other (perhaps less visible) jobs are undervalued. So, how can you get around this? Let’s take a closer look at that now.
Use the factor matrix to maintain a consistent approach
In Pay Equity Compass, job evaluation is based on a factor matrix with predefined questions, scores, and weightings. It provides you with a common framework for assessment and helps you focus on the role’s requirements, not on the person performing the job.
Instead of evaluating roles based on gut feelings, you review the same factors for all jobs—such as knowledge, responsibility, effort, and working conditions. This makes it easier to justify the assessment and understand why different roles are placed at different levels.
Learn more about the Pay Equity Compass.
Establish a principle before you begin—and stick to it
The factor matrix provides the structure, but you still need to agree on how to interpret the questions. Should you evaluate the job based on how the role is intended to function within the organization, based on the actual demands of day-to-day work, or based on a documented job description?
The important thing is that you choose a principle and stick to it throughout the job evaluation process. This reduces the risk of some jobs being evaluated generously, while others are evaluated more strictly.
Therefore, it’s worth pausing every now and then to check that you’re still following the same approach. Ask yourselves, for example:
- Are we evaluating the role based on the same principle as before?
- Are we focusing on the job requirements, not on the person or the team?
- Would we make the same assessment if the role were in a different department?
- Is the level reasonable compared to other roles in the organization?
In short: same principle, same questions, same yardstick.
Compare horizontally—one area at a time
Another way to keep the evaluation objective is to compare one area at a time. In Pay Equity Compass, you can work horizontally through the factor matrix. This means you assess one factor group at a time for all jobs, rather than evaluating an entire job in isolation from start to finish.
This makes it easier to spot if something stands out. If a role receives an unusually high rating in, for example, responsibility or effort, it becomes more apparent when compared to other roles in the same area. This approach reduces the risk of a single team being “inflated” in the evaluation.
Calibrate before moving forward
In Pay Equity Compass, calibration is an important checkpoint once the job evaluation is complete. This is where you see the final scores your evaluations have yielded and how different jobs compare to one another, so you can verify that the evaluation is consistent and identify any shortcomings before they carry over into the pay equity analysis.
For example, consider the following:
- Have certain roles ended up unexpectedly high or low?
- Do similar jobs appear to have been evaluated differently?
- Are there roles that have received scores corresponding to significantly more complex work?
- Do any adjustments need to be made to better reflect the actual demands of the job?
The point of calibration is thus to help you identify misjudgments before the results are used further in the analysis of your pay gaps.
To summarize: With the support of the factor matrix, horizontal comparison, and calibration in Flex HRM Pay Equity Compass, you and your colleagues gain a more solid foundation for your pay survey—and better conditions for analyzing pay in a fair and accurate manner.
Want to learn more?
Do you use Flex HRM Pay Equity Compass and want to learn more about how to work smart with job evaluation (and everything else related to pay equity analysis)? Read more in our Knowledge Base.
Haven’t made the switch to Pay Equity Compass yet but are curious to learn more? Contact us, and we’ll show you how!
