Level pegging

The obituary of job evaluation has been written many times over the past 30 years. “Farewell to internal equity as companies reward merit” was one PM headline in the late 1980s. In 2000, US reward guru Ed Lawler’s “Pay strategy: new thinking for the new millennium” (Compensation and Benefits Review, January/February 2000) famously demolished such traditional methods in favour of more flexible, person-based pay.

Yet, as the downturn deepens, the orthodoxy of unregulated market- and performance-related pay is increasingly being called into question. So it’s a timely moment to ask whether the predicted long-term decline in job evaluation in the UK actually happened. And, if it didn’t, what explains the survival of this apparent handmaiden of grade-driven, hierarchical, status-conscious organisations?
 

Language does not simply reflect what is going on in organisational life: it also influences what people think and what they do

Linda Holbeche, director of the Holbeche Partnership and visiting professor of HRM/OD at Cass Business School