Meaning, Definition, Purpose, Process, Features of Job Evaluation
Table of Content:
Meaning of Job Evaluation
Job evaluation Meaning – Job evaluation can be defined as a structured and organised method of assessing jobs and classifying them according to their utility in the organisation. It also helps in designing compensation plans. It generally depends upon compensation variables (skills required for job performance, working conditions and job responsibilities) instead of employees.
For example, the compensation variables for a junior-level engineer may consist of a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, an industrial experience of three years, and experience of two years in product testing to ensure quality and consistency.
The Group of compensation variables that are used to determine wage rates will vary, as some variables are used for determining hourly wages, some are used for determining salaries and some for evaluating performance on a task basis.
Definition of Job Evaluation
Some of the job evaluation definitions are as follows:
According to Kimball and Steckhan – “Work appraisal is an effort made to evaluate every job in an organization and that such job should have a reasonable basic wage.”
According to the International Labor Union – “An attempt is made to determine and compare each other the expectations to be expected from an ordinary employee in performing a particular job normally, without taking into account the individual ability and progress of the employee concerned.” The job is the appraisal.”
According to Dale Yoder – “Work appraisal is a process which provides stability in estimating the relative study of multiple jobs in an organization. It is truly a job marking process which is not different from the labelling of workers.”
According to Wetzel – “Work appraisal consists of arranging tasks in order of their importance or pay, along with the analysis of employees as explained in standardized terminology.”
According to Atwater Smith – “Work appraisal is the marking of performances according to particular techniques to determine the corresponding value of each work.”
According to Williman R.Spreegel – “Work evaluation is a technique by which one function in a trade or industry is compared and graded or graded by other functions so that it is known that each job requires a worker of some ability.”
Purpose of Job Evaluation
The purposes of job evaluation are as follows:
1) To regulate the real value of jobs, depending upon a systematic evaluation of job complexity and to perform it autonomously, through a set of pre-determined compensation standards, without considering the characteristics and outcomes of the real job performers.
2) To correlate the jobs with their real value and to decide the complications associated with the job and logical job structure.
3) To render a logical base for equal payment of wages and salaries so that equity is maintained.
4) To arrange the jobs according to their significance based on job functions, liabilities and other concerning factors.
5) To attain and keep thorough information about each job or occupation.
6) To develop a system for regular review of wage rates.
7) To render a standard for employee career planning.
8) To aid the employers in identifying the expandable jobs as well as the removable jobs, if it is required, sometimes jobs are removed because of technological changes. Whenever technology changes, previous jobs like typing or manual adding, become less important and sometimes completely not even required.
Process of Job Evaluation
The steps in the job evaluation process are :
Step 1: Identification of Jobs for Evaluation
The initial step of job evaluation is the identification of the jobs to be included in this process. It is a difficult task for an organisation to assess every job the organisation. Hence, it chooses some of the major jobs, which represent a combination of identical jobs for evaluation purposes.
After the identification of jobs, the next task is to decide the factors to be examined. The evaluator is free to evaluate any number of job factors such as physical and mental efforts, attentiveness, communication and leadership skills, knowledge and experience, job difficulty and pressure, etc.
Step 2: Gathering the Relevant Data
In this phase, all the relevant information about the job being evaluated is collected. For this purpose, evaluators may use any of the data collection methods such as questionnaires, observations, interviews, etc.
Step 3: Determination of Job Ranking
Once all the relevant information about a job is examined, an evaluator analyses the extent of availability of the factors selected for the job. Based on the outcome of this analysis, an evaluator evaluates the ratings for every job.
Since many identical factors. are analysed during the process of evaluation, as a result, the ratings represent the relative value of the job concerning other jobs in the organisation.
Step 4: Selection of Benchmark Jobs
Job evaluation has the primary purpose of establishing pay grades for every kind of job. With this view, it becomes important for an organisation to be aware of competitors’ pay grades for jobs at similar levels.
Therefore, it may not be practical for an organisation to guess the comparative pay grades of all the jobs within the organisation itself. For this reason, the evaluators may choose those jobs, which are prevalent in every organisation and are comparable.
These jobs are commonly known as benchmark jobs and act as a tool in establishing the pay grades of different jobs in the organisation.
Step 5: Wage and Salary Surveys
During this step, a survey is organised by the organisation about the pay scales of the benchmark jobs in different organisations belonging to the same industry. These surveys may be organised by an organisation either formally or informally.
Likewise, an organisation may either organise a direct survey to collect the necessary information or utilise the reports published through several professional agencies or magazines.
Based on these surveys, the organisation decides the financial value of each job. Several organisations, sometimes, opt for informal sources such as telephones, newspapers and the internet for organising salary surveys.
Step 6: Review and Feedback
Changes in the external environment affect organisations constantly and result in changing internal factors as well. For example, technological changes strongly affect job characteristics and demands.
As a result, organisations are pressurised to analyse the jobs regularly to determine their values in the changing environment. It is necessary to take feedback from various stakeholders such as supervisors, managers, job holders, and unions about the different dimensions of job evaluation to enhance the entire process regularly.
Features of Job Evaluation
The main objective of job appraisal is to manage the cost of a job. This cost keeps on changing under the pressure of place, time, and other business factors.
The main features of Job Evaluation are as below:
(i) Job evaluation determines the value of the work. Under this, various factors like efficiency, responsibility, accountability, competency level etc. are taken into account about the job.
(ii) Job evaluation is the outcome of job analysis.
(iii) Work appraisal does not fix salary but constitutes the basis for it. Efforts are made to remove the differences in salary.
(iv) It is an effort to evaluate the job, not the person.
(v) To provide important and detailed information for the determination of salary.
(vi) Job evaluation supports the management to achieve maximum worker satisfaction and maximum productivity level.
(vii) Job evaluation is not done by an individual but by a specially qualified team.