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LOCAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES JOB EVALUATION SCHEME:

TECHNICAL NOTE NO. 2: THE PRINCIPLES OF THE NJC JES

1. The Technical Working Group's Remit

The remit of the joint Technical Working Group (TWG) commissioned by the then negotiating groups was to:

2. Principles

In designing the scheme to comply with equal value principles and practices, the principles followed by the TWG were that:

  1. All aspects of the scheme should be developed on the basis of understanding of local government jobs and their demands. This led to:

    1. Development and testing of the factor plan, initially using already available job descriptions and other information, but subsequently through pilot testing of the scheme on questionnaires completed by jobholders for 150 jobs from a number of local authorities, using trained joint test evaluation panels.

    1. Design of the scheme scoring and weighting systems on the basis of agreed principles, developed during the design process, rather than from any preconceived ideas about outcomes or reliance on statistical techniques, which might carry risk of re-incorporating historical discrimination.

  1. All significant features of all jobs within the NJC remit should be fairly measured by the scheme. This is reflected in:

    1. The relatively large number of factors, each intended to measure a discrete job demand

    1. Inclusion of factors such as Interpersonal Skills, Physical Skills, Emotional Demand and Responsibility for People to ensure that features of jobs, which might have been undervalued in the past, were fairly measured

    1. The agreed minimum weighting of factors at 5% of total points (Effort and Working Conditions factors) to ensure that every factor could impact on outcomes

  1. Adoption of the principle of equality throughout, unless there was clear justification for moving away from this. This can be seen in:

    1. The aim of having equal steps in demand between factor levels and then equal points steps to reflect this;

    1. Similar factors being developed in parallel to each other, for example, Responsibility, Effort factors each with the same number of levels and the same weighting.

  1. Agreement that all aspects of the scheme should be `open' and `transparent'. This led to:

    1. Publication of the factors, factor levels, scoring and weighting of the scheme, and a user guide on implementation, as the recommended model for carrying out grading reviews, in Part 4 of the Single Status Agreement

    1. Development of a Job Description Questionnaire asking for detailed factual information about jobs, so that the information base for each evaluation would be clear.

  1. Adoption of the principle of joint working and recommendation that this should also be followed for implementation. This resulted in:

    1. Joint working by the Technical Working Group in developing the scheme and by those involved in testing the factor plan

    1. Inclusion of the principle of jointness in the user guide on implementation

    1. Joint presentations and training on the scheme, wherever possible

3. External Verification

The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) were consulted regularly during the development of the scheme and made helpful comments, which were followed, particularly on implementation issues. The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) were also consulted but declined to comment.

TECH NOTE 2 APRIL 2004

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