A job evaluation project can be a tough sell. Executives want the best numbers at their fingertips but they often stop listening when they discover the amount of time and detail work involved in job evaluation.
If you're pitching a job evaluation project or salary structure update for next year, get ready to do a good deal of upfront persuasion. Not only will you need the executives to approve the budget, you will also need some of them to act as sponsors who will speak out supportively for the project in what's bound to be a lengthy project schedule.
What will convince executives about the value of the time and technical commitment that's involved in job evaluation? Boy, do I have a resource for you.
Check out Mercer's "Global Job Evaluation Return on Investment Survey Results Report" for real data. Undertaken to, "examine the relevance of job evaluation in today's environment . . .," it can provide you with a range of findings bound to influence executive attitudes. And if you're going global in your work, there are breakouts on views in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, as well as North America.
Here are a few examples from North American participants.
- Reliability--91% report that job evaluation helps them make reliable compensation and benefits decisions
- Improved Efficiency--61% report that responding to individual grading requests took less than 5 days following the job evaluation project, compared to just 37% of survey participants meeting that timeframe before the project
- Cost Savings--53% report that their company's ongoing job evaluation work costs less following their completion of a job evaluation project
- Payroll Management--69% report savings in pay packages of 1% to 5% as a result of their job evaluation project
Just as important, participants report that clear and consistent job evaluation methodologies provide them with a common language to use for discussing job attributes and facilitating the alignment of roles across business segments and geographies.
Thinking your executives may still be skeptical if Mercer's survey sample doesn't adequately represent your company? Hmmm . . .
569 HR professionals responded. Participants are from 14 industries and 56 countries. Their companies' headcounts range from less than 1,000 employees (27%) to more than 100,000 employees (6%). In other words, the findings should be hard to ignore.
Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. Margaret is a Board member of the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA). She coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.
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