Appraising the Job through Job Evaluation (JE): Not an Exact Science

The most important factor in maintaining and developing sound industrial relations is wage / salary administration. It is in the interest of the organization to have a sound wage or salary structure so as to attract the talent in the organization and on the other hand to have a satisfied work group but it is one of the most difficult functions of the Personnel Management to determine the rates of monetary base compensation and it is not possible unless the relative worth of job is known. Determining base compensation is equally important for the employee because it determines the status of employee in the society. In order to determine the relative worth of the job in comparison to other jobs in the organization, Job Evaluation is the systematic technique for rating the job and not the job holder. It takes into account the demands of the jobs in terms of efforts and abilities but it does not take into account the individual efforts and abilities. It is an important tool in fixing the scales of wages for different grades of jobs. The procedure of job evaluation is tailored according to the needs of the organization. It involves collection of data through job analysis, preparation of job description and then job grading where relative levels of various jobs are determined leading to pricing the job by any of non quantitative or quantitative methods of job evaluation. None of the methods of job evaluation is free from defects; hence none is said to be the best in all conditions and, for all types of organizations. In order to make job evaluation more effective certain principles and a mix of all the methods should be adopted