NEWS IN BRIEF

Acas, the government’s employment relations service, has launched a new guide to help businesses decide whether to carry out job evaluation as a way of reducing their chances of facing an equal pay claim.

The aim is to help them understand what job evaluation entails and why they might want to undertake it in their workplace. It also considers the benefits and risks of undertaking job evaluation.

The booklet explains how analytical job evaluation works in practice and discusses in more detail the use of “factor plans”. However, it does not include nonanalytical job evaluation schemes such as 'paired comparisons' or 'job ranking' as they do not provide a defence against equal value claims.

The new booklet was launched soon after the organisation’s 2008 annual report showed a 25 per cent rise in employment tribunals and potential employment tribunal claims. This rise was partly attributed to equal pay claims.

Acas argues that there are a number of benefits for businesses from doing job evaluations, such as:

• Providing a cornerstone for a fair and equitable pay system
• Facilitating the introduction of new or changed jobs
• Offering a defence against employment tribunal claims of pay discrimination
• Supporting recruitment and retention
• Preventing the stereotyping of jobs and roles

The new booklet can be downloaded in PDF format by going to: www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=682