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Davies Ndumiso Sibanda
WITH financial challenges faced by workers, disputes and litigation related to job evaluation are on the rise as workers query their grades with the hope that a change in grade will assist increase their earnings and others call for job evaluation to be undertaken leading organisations to bigger problems.

There are also many workers who are challenging existing job evaluation methods as they demand new job evaluation processes.

Some employers have also pushed for job evaluation with the hope that job evaluation will assist them get rid of undesired workers and they have found out when it is too late that job evaluation does not provide the solutions they had hoped for.

Job evaluation is not as simple as employers and workers think and it is a complex process that can only be undertaken by well trained and experienced individuals.

If the process is recklessly handled it can easily be a source of labour relations problems and in worse cases litigation, which could leave the business with a huge financial burden.

Not long ago I dealt with a case where workers disowned job evaluation results alleging they were not part of the process, which they claimed was adulterated by the hired consultants and the employer.

In another case, parties have taken each other to court over non-implementation of job evaluation and in another case the job evaluation has stalled because workers have refused to participate alleging they were not consulted on the decision to grade jobs.

In another case workers allege the grading method was imposed by the employer despite it having been rejected by workers.

In many other cases, workers are querying the job evaluation process alleging it lacks transparency and there are also disputes related to salary structuring where workers are demanding to know how credible the salary survey was and others query for fairness of the notching process while others query linkage of grades to various benefits.

The list of disputes is endless.

To avoid all these problems, works council engagement must be continuous throughout the process to manage any emerging challenge.

With all the given challenges it must be understood that the purpose of job evaluation is determining the worth of one job relative to another and its purpose is to achieve fairness in distribution of basic salaries according to grade.

Job evaluations helps create internal equity, creates a fair platform for job comparison, helps reduce allegations of favouritism in salary payment, helps manage payroll costs that are related to benefits and many others.

The job evaluation method to be used must be driven by acceptability, ease of implementation, cost effectiveness, cheap to maintain and above all it must be easy to explain to the ordinary workers.

There are many methods of job evaluation, however over eighty percent of organisations in sub-Saharan Africa, Zimbabwe included, use the Paterson Job Evaluation method.

There are others like Castellion which in my opinion is one of the most expensive to install and maintain and is difficult for workers to understand.

It used to have twelve grading factors and these have since been fused and reduced to six.

Others like Hay method are more user friendly to managerial positions and maintenance costs are generally high.

This is a licensed package. Before selecting a job grading method, the organisation must evaluate available methods and select one that best meets business needs capable of adding value.

Common areas of conflict that must be watched include job description writing and confirmation.

The golden rule is that never grade a job whose job description has not been signed by both the incumbent and supervisor confirming that it is correct, more-so given the fact that the quality of the job description largely determines the accuracy of the grade.

Further, never use a grading method that has not been agreed and accepted at NEC, or organisation wide.

And above all, ensure the grading is as participatory as possible and those jobs to be graded by consultants without participation of employees must be pronounced at the onset, these are usually for senior managers.

The recording of the grades must be done soon after the job has been graded with grading score sheets being kept as security documents until the job evaluation settles in and all related queries attended to.

The rule book must be signed by all grades and kept permanently as security documents as it helps keeps the history of unique decisions that were made.

Above all the job evaluation quality checking process must be explained to the workers and any changes to grades must be accompanied by notes as to why the grade changed at quality checking stage.

After quality checking all grades must sign to confirm the accuracy of grading and refer the exercise for confirmation as complete by works council.

Organisations should also avoid undertaking job evaluation if they have no capacity to carry related costs as it leads to conflict, more-so if the issue of affordability was never discussed and agreed before embarking on the exercise.

Related problems are a major source of conflict.

In conclusion, there are many other things involved in job grading and salary structuring, which are the two major activities that constitute job evaluation.

The bottom-line is that the exercise must be professionally done under the guidance of experts.

Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on: email: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Or cell No: 0772 375 235