How to evaluate jobs?

The Hay Group Job Evaluation Methodology (Point-Factor-Rating)

Have you ever got into a debate with a business manager who is pushing to promote one of their team, but you’re pushing back as the change in scope doesn’t qualify as significant enough for a promotion in your eyes? Perhaps you’re trying to help a hiring manager determine the relative seniority of a new position they want to hire into their team and they’re having some trouble as the scope of the role is different to the typical profiles they hire.

This is where Job Evaluation comes in. In short, it’s a way to determine the size of a job within the organisation. Before we do that, there are some key aspects of how to use and apply the scoring that you should keep in mind.

General Principles about Job Evaluation:

• The job is what’s being evaluated, not the job holder.
• The job is evaluated at being completed to an acceptable standard.
• The job is evaluated as-is. Not what it might have been or what it could be.
• The job is evaluated with no considerations of its current pay, level, job title.

How to Evaluate a Job:

The Hays approach breaks down all jobs into 3 primary components, each having some sub-components. Together the 3 primary components aggregate to reflect the scope of the job. They are as follows:

1. Know-How: this is the overall knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to perform the job effectively. It reflects the depth and breadth of technical, managerial, and human skills required for the position. The sub-components of know-how are:

• Technical Knowledge - subject-matter expertise
• Managerial Breadth - ability to manage resources, people, and processes
• Interpersonal Skills - communication and relationship-building

2. Problem-Solving: this factor assesses the mental effort and analytical ability required to solve problems. It takes into account the complexity of the issues, the need for creativity or innovation, and the mental processes needed to develop solutions. The sub-components for problem-solving:

• Thinking Environment - the structure within which problem-solving occurs. It could range from routine tasks with clear procedures to complex, ambiguous challenges requiring original thought and multiple perspectives. A more complex thinking environment demands higher levels of cognitive engagement.
• Thinking Challenge - the nature and difficulty of the problems that must be solved in the role. It considers whether problems are well-defined or abstract, whether they have clear solutions or require more conceptual thinking, and the degree of uncertainty involved.

3. Accountability: this factor measures the level of responsibility the job has for achieving results. It reflects the degree to which the job impacts organisational outcomes and the extent of the authority to make decisions. The sub-components for Accountability are: 

• Freedom to Act - the autonomy of the role in decision-making. It considers whether the employee works under close supervision with limited discretion or has broad authority to make independent decisions. Higher levels of freedom to act indicate more significant decision-making power and responsibility.
• Magnitude - the scale or scope of the role’s impact on the organisation, often measured by financial metrics, size of managed teams, or breadth of influence. A larger magnitude typically indicates a role that influences critical business outcomes.
• Impact - the degree to which the role's actions directly affect the organisation's success. It considers how significant the outcomes of the role are to the business, including financial results, operational performance, or strategic objectives.

How to evaluate a job?

To evaluate a job, put a table together as seen below and add a relative score in for each of the 8 sub-components. The actual number you use can be anything (the below example is a 1-5 scale), just ensure that the scale is consistent for all the jobs you are evaluating.

Here we can see that while the scope of Job A and B are different, their overall size is the same, whereas Job C is larger in scale.

Things to watch out for:

There are a couple of limitations with the above method that are worth noting:

• Job evaluation is about the relative size of jobs. It’s scope is internally facing so is only applicable within the organisation. 
• The process requires honest judgement in identifying and assessing differences in size and value between jobs. The evaluation is as close as possible to be objective but this is not scientifically guaranteed.

In Summary: 

Job Evaluation is a principle that is key to putting in a strong structure to enable an organisation to grow and scale in an equitable way. It can be used to ensure your Job Titles are consistent across departments and can apply to check compensation is aligned internally and towards external benchmarks. The Hays Group Job Evaluation methodology takes into account multiple dimensions of job complexity which provide a spread of factors to help determine the relative size of different roles within an organisation.