Following significant work by trade unions to raise the issues HMPPS conducted a review of the implementation of the Job Evaluation Scheme (JES). The recommendations were helpful, vindicating all of the representations that we had made. Some of the recommendations are long term but there are also immediate actions to take.
Work to prepare Job Descriptions and Questionnaires (JDQs) must be done with the support of job analysts who have the expertise in the JES requirements and scoring, staff taking part in workshops to produce the documents should have access to the JES guidance. If staff are involved at appeal stage they should have access to the JES guidance and the scoring rationale for the original outcome. Unfortunately, despite these recommendations we became aware that workshops were going ahead without job analysts and without providing the guidance and information required.
It is particularly important at appeal stage that we get job evaluations right to ensure that members are paid properly for their work. After unions intervened we now have a single point of contact for all job evaluation work who will ensure that the recommendations are implemented. This may mean that job evaluation outcomes take a few more weeks but we believe it is better to wait a little longer than to spend years having your work undervalued and for our members to lose pay.
We continue to keep a close eye on job evaluations, please contact your branch reps in the first place if you have any concerns about what is happening.
E3 Job Evaluation Reviews
While we address the immediate issues relating to the Job Evaluations for the unified model we are also continuing to pursue the reviews of some of the E3 job evaluations. We await a new timetable for these reviews but we have agreed the priority order. Group 1 will be: Enforcement Officer, Business Manager, VLO. Group 2 will be: AP Manager, SPO, MAPPA Co-Ordinator. We will update members once we have the timetable and work begins.
Removal of Pay Band 1
One of the agreements we made as part of the 2020 pay agreement was to remove pay band 1 from Probation. This mainly affects staff with the Admin Assistant job description, most of whom work on reception in contact centres. We have been working with the employer to find an appropriate way to move staff to an alternative job description that will be evaluated at Band 2 without changing their duties significantly.
Napo’s firm belief is that Receptionist in a contact centre is a skilled and valued role and if the duties that are currently being performed are appropriately presented in the job description they would attract Band 2 in a job evaluation. Some of the historical issues have arisen when the work that Reception staff do in recognising and responding to risk are not expressed in the job description. More work is required to protect the interests of the staff in these roles so that no one suffers any detriment while Band 1 is removed and we will continue to share updates once we have them.