Equal Pay Insight.
Job Evaluation : Case Law Round Up
Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs v Robertson [2003]
An employment tribunal must be satisfied not only that the scheme is thorough in analysis and capable of impartial application, but also that it is sufficiently detailed to allow the identification of a particular employee at a particular point in a particular salary grade. It may also be necessary to show that, in addition to being internally sound and consistent, the scheme was actually applied in a fair and objective way to produce the evaluations on which reliance was placed.
Practice Implications:
Ensure job descriptions are comprehensive and capture all information about jobs.
Make sure to detail the job evaluation process, such as keeping records of composition of panels, equality training for panels, and rationales for evaluations.
Bromley v H & J Quick Ltd [1988]
Mrs Bromley and her colleagues were administrative staff working for a car sales firm. The company had earlier undertaken a job evaluation exercise where some jobs were evaluated by a joint panel of management and employees, while others (including those of the claimant and three of the comparators) were ‘slotted in’ to the rank order by management on a ‘whole job’ basis. The Court of Appeal held that it was not good enough that bench mark jobs had been evaluated if there had been no valuation of the claimant's and her comparator's jobs in the process. This meant that the scheme did not comply with the requirement to be analytical and could not provide a defence to the claims.
Practice Implication:
Do not use a “whole job” basis for evaluation as this is not sufficiently analytical. You can match jobs using a job family approach but only when each factor has been evaluated separately using benchmarks.
Rummler v Dato-Druck GmbH [1987]
In this case, muscular effort was included as a job evaluation factor. The European Court of Justice held that EEC Directive 75/117 on equal pay for men and women did not prevent the use of the criterion of muscular effort or exertion or the degree to which work is physically heavy when determining pay grades. However, if the scheme was not to be discriminatory overall, it must also take into account other criteria for which female employees may show particular aptitude—for example manual dexterity.
Practice Implication:
Make sure there is a balance between the factors which both men and women use in their work.
Dibro Ltd v Hore & Others [1990]
In this case the employer commissioned a job evaluation study after a claim for equal value was made, which rated the comparator’s job as having a higher score then the claimant’s job. The Employment Appeals Tribunal held that the outputs of the job evaluation were admissible provided that the evaluation was based on an analysis of the jobs at the time the claim was raised.
Practice Implications:
Job evaluations need to be up to date to provide a relevant defence
An evaluation carried out after an equal pay claim has been raised will be admissible provided it is a valid study and evaluates the jobs as they were when proceedings were raised.
Diageo had a company wide procedure for job evaluation which included local and central evaluation panels. The claimant’s job was evaluated by two managers, but only one had received training in using and implementing the job evaluation system. The claimant’s assertion that the job evaluation study was not valid was successful, with the Employment Appeal Tribunal finding that a panel of two, with only one trained evaluator, and the absence of record keeping and central monitoring meant that the job evaluation was not a “valid” defence to the equal pay claim.
Practice Implications:
Ensure that you stick to your organisation’s policy on the process of job evaluation
Each evaluator should receive comprehensive training.
When evaluating, write a short rationale for the chosen level of each factor.