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Appendix II: Job Evaluation

Job evaluation is an integral element of the pay equity process. It allows for the comparison of different kinds of jobs, and thus for the identification of wage discrimination against female-predominant work.

Job evaluation assesses the comparative worth of jobs by rating them against a common set of factors, such as analytical abilities, physical exertion, accountability for budgets, and unpleasant working environments. Evaluation factors cluster into four broad categories: the skills required to do the job, the effort needed for the job, the job's responsibilities, and the working conditions under which the job is done.

Ratings, which are normally done by a committee, result in point scores against the different factors. A job's value is simply the composite of these scores. Once job evaluation is complete, it becomes easy to compare different jobs on the basis of their values, in total points, and wages, in dollars. The table below provides an illustration:

Results can also be presented using a graph, where the horizontal axis lists job values and the vertical axis, wages. Graphs are especially helpful when a large number of jobs are evaluated, since they make it easier to spot patterns and calculate average differences. On the following page is an example, with five male-predominant jobs represented by squares, and five female-predominant jobs represented by triangles.

In the past, job evaluation was usually conducted using generic "off-the-shelf" systems. These sometimes reflected a tendency to undervalue work performed mainly by women. That is why, for pay equity purposes, it is important to check that a job evaluation system is "gender neutral". This means the system must:

• be carefully designed to reflect the specific context in which it is to be applied, including the mission of the organization and its mix of jobs,

• incorporate and give fair weight to rating criteria which reflect the sorts of work women typically do, as well as the sorts of work men do,

• be clear, comprehensible, and non-sexist in its language, so that when people carry out ratings, they have sufficient guidance and do not just fall back on familiar, sometimes discriminatory, hierarchies, and

• be applied in a rigorous, balanced fashion which avoids bias by using complete job information, including women in the process, providing appropriate training to raters, and so on.

Job evaluation systems do not produce totally "objective" assessments of the absolute worth of different positions. However, they are the most systematic method available for ranking jobs and determining whether work done primarily by women is being equitably recognized and compensated.

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