Glasgow City Council has made a statement about job evaluation (JE), but I'm afraid it's about as vague as Nicola Sturgeon's road map out of lockdown.
Everyone knows about Covid (we are all sick to the back teeth with Covid) - what the Claimants want to know is how is GCC going to make up for all the lost time?
More to follow, so watch this space.
Job evaluation update - message from Chief Executive February 2021
I want to give you an update about the job evaluation process and a new pay and grading scheme for the council.
As you may recall, the job evaluation process in the council involves evaluating each job to make sure it is fairly ranked. The rank order of jobs will then support the work to design a new pay and grading scheme, which will be a separate project, and make sure that everyone is paid equally for equal work.
We had originally planned to deliver this evaluation work, with your support through the many job interviews that would need to take place, and a new pay and grading scheme by April 2021. This timescale is no longer possible because of the pandemic. Determining the exact implementation timescale for the rank order of jobs and the subsequent new pay and grading scheme is a key part of this work.
A report has been prepared to update the council's General Purposes City Policy Committee and I want to explain what this means for everyone.
You can read the full report on the council's website here.
When the pandemic struck last year, our efforts were focused on keeping our most essential services running, supporting our most vulnerable citizens and educating our children and young people. This meant that all our resources including our dedicated staff and IT equipment had to be prioritised to where they were needed most, to deal with the devastating effects on the people and businesses of Glasgow.
Quite understandably, the job evaluation process was affected by the prioritisation of our resources, as were many other areas of the council. Our staff have been at the heart of supporting the city through this pandemic and still are, as we grapple with the effects of this new variant. It just wouldn't have been possible earlier in this pandemic, to take your focus away from doing the critical jobs you do, to ask you to do something more than you were already doing.
That said, the council is committed to making sure that everyone is paid equally for work of equal value, so we want to commence with remainder of the job evaluation process and ask staff to once again volunteer for interviews.
The health and safety of our workforce is paramount as we continue to follow government guidance to stop the spread of the virus. As our IT capability to support remote interviews has grown over the last few months with the roll-out of new computers and MS Teams, we will initially start with remote interviews and staff briefings on Teams.
We are working with the trade unions to agree the finer details and support for staff for this new way forward. We anticipate that we will start asking for volunteers who are able to do remote interviews in March.
We recognise that not everyone will have the IT equipment or the skills to take part in remote interviews. Staff who can't attend a remote interview, even with support, will not be disadvantaged. Part of our planning is also looking at safe ways to interview staff in person, following the latest government guidance, and workplace risk assessments and individual risk assessments, if required.
Remember, much of this process involves your participation in the interviews, it's critical that you're able to get involved and tell the Job Evaluation Team what you do to deliver the services the city relies on every day. All you'll be asked to do is talk about your job and what you do.
Before the pandemic, the job evaluation team working alongside the trade unions, had made considerable progress on agreeing a lot of the technical details on how the job evaluation scheme would be applied across the council family and identifying which jobs would be evaluated first.
The result of this work was that many staff volunteered to attend the information briefing sessions and interviews about the work they do for the city. You'll find more information about the job evaluation scheme and the progress made on the website at www.glasgow.gov.uk/jobevaluation.
Every job will be evaluated but we won't have to interview everyone in the council. The employee briefing you received in 2019 explains how we will identify people for interviews to represent the vast amount of jobs the council does.
I hope this provides you with an overview of our current plans and we will keep you updated about future decisions on timescales for the new pay and grading scheme.
More detailed information will be provided to the next groups of staff who will be asked to volunteer for interviews and information about next steps will also be provided to staff who have already been interviewed.
If you have any questions you can check the frequently asked questions on the website or email the job evaluation team at JE-SUPPORT@glasgow.gov.uk, or ask your line manager to submit your question.
As always, you can also email me at AnneMarie@glasgow.gov.uk
All communications will be added to the council's website at www.glasgow.gov.uk/jobevaluation
