Evaluator+ ©

A history of the development of a Computer-assisted approach to Job Evaluation with Equal Value in mind.

In 1989, in the knowledge that any job evaluation system invented before 1984 might at best be inappropriate and at worst, illegal, I was invited to examine a consultancy firm’s in-house job  evaluation system for efficacy under the Equal Value Amendment to the Equal Pay Act.  

No firm conclusions were reached, but I continued to research the subject of Job Evaluation in depth, and set out to write  the specification for  a system that would comply with the Equal Value Amendment.  Evaluator+ was born.

This CaJE software is described in  The Job Evaluation Handbook by Michael Armstrong and Angela Baron which was published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development  in November 1995 (ISBN 0-85292-581-6) amongst 'some of the most popular job evaluation software available'.

The software has  attracted interest from job evaluation experts in the UK Treasury and a number of Non-Departmental Public Bodies.  It has been used by two separate divisions of a Construction group and a  Television News Company, facing strike action, used it to put into place a market-related graded salary structure, supported by both staff and unions. One Consultancy uses it and  others have considered  it, including PricewaterhouseCoopers in Zimbabwe.  It has helped organisations in the downstream oil industry in Scotland and a German - based supplier of products to the National Health Service.  In 1995 it was installed into a Mental Health NHS Trust.  In  December 1996 the system was demonstrated to several job evaluation experts from the Dutch Trade Union movement.  Interest has also being expressed by organisations in Barbados, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Greece, the Far East, the Middle East, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey and the USA; in 1997 it was used  to evaluate  some 1600 jobs occupied by approximately 120,000 people comprising the Malawi Civil Service in Africa, probably the biggest job evaluation project in the world.

Back  in the UK an early version of the software was used  with great success in  a Regional Brewing Company!  In May 1998 it was considered by the Local Government Management Board, along with others, in their search for a computerised version of their job evaluation scheme capable of evaluating a whole  variety of jobs occupied by some 1.2 million people employed in the Public Sector.

In the first five months of 1999, the JE results of the 1997/98 project with the Malawi Civil Service were used, together with salaries from a national salary survey, to develop a  new market-related, graded salary structure for the whole Civil Service.

The software has been developed in such a way that it provides a flexible approach, allowing organisations to tackle job or competencies evaluation efficiently, effectively and economically.