Principles of Job Evaluation

Job evaluation as evident from the word itself aims at evaluating the job and not the person. It is a process of evaluating and determining the value of the job for an organisation. The evaluation is always in relative and not absolute terms. The idea is evaluate a certain job against other jobs in the organisation so that a fair compensation system against various bands or levels can be established.

Organisations use various ways to evaluate jobs for arriving upon a compensation scheme. They vary with the size of the organisation and the kind of industry they operate in. Job ranking, pair comparison and benchmarking are the various ways of evaluation.

The simpler or the easiest to perform is the job ranking method. In this method the jobs are taken as a whole and ranked against each other. The jobs are ordered according to perceived seniority. Such method is easier to apply in a small organisation but gets complicated once used for large corporations.

The other method is the pair comparison method where jobs are compared in pairs. It is more structured approach to comparing jobs. Yet another method is benchmarking where certain jobs are slotted and then examined in detail. These are then used as benchmarks in evaluating various jobs.

In addition Point Factor Analysis is also used to evaluate various jobs. The method is an old and tested one. In this method jobs are broken down into various factors such as skills required, experience, education required. A set of questions is framed against each factor and the response determines the score. Each factor is allotted a certain weight.