Job Evaluation In Human Resource Management

Albert Einstein once said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”. Value, refers to the importance, usefulness, or the relative worth in terms of money of an object or a service. Thus, Albert Einstein, is emphasising the need to provide value to be able to differentiate one’s self with others. In human resources management, the value of an employee can be differentiated in terms of the employee's job and the employee’s performance in relation to his or her job. Assessing the value of the job, is called job evaluation while assessing the employee’s performance on the job, is called performance appraisal. This paper will focus on job evaluation, its common policies and practices.

Job evaluation is defined as a systematic process

There are four common job evaluation method to choose from, which can either be qualitative or quantitative, all have its own advantages and disadvantages. For the qualitative method, the organisation can choose from either job ranking, or job classification. Job ranking is the simplest form and is done by comparing and ranking all the jobs based on its importance as determined through the assessment of the roles and responsibilities of the employee. Job classification on the other hand, is done through grouping of jobs based on the skills and difficulty in performing the job. At the end of the classification, all the jobs will be categorised into a class which would later determine the wages per each grade or class. Similarly, there are two types of quantitative method, the factor comparison and the point rating methods. Point rating is the most common evaluation method, jobs are evaluated using factors such as skills, knowledge , responsibility and sometimes even, hazards on the job wherein, points are allotted to each of the factors. Factors are then weighted and the points allocated to the factors of the job are summed. Then, the jobs with similar scores based on the total points are grouped together as class or grade. Finally, the factor comparison method combines both job ranking and point rating

Before conducting a job evaluation, it is important to create a detailed job evaluation policy which outlines the objectives, the roles and responsibilities in implementing the policy, the procedures involve the evaluation process and the process for appeal. Moreover, to ensure effectiveness of the job evaluation, organisations should also look at the prevalent practices in conducting job evaluation. As discussed, organisations today will usually have compensation philosophy and they based the worth of the jobs on the market pricing to ensure competitiveness in the labor market. Indeed, no process has yet been created to replace the process of job evaluation in organisations and until then, job evaluation will remain as a tool that champions both the interest of the companies and its employees in ensuring fairness in the