Job Evaluation in the Education and Library Boards

A report published today by John Dowdall CB, the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland, examines the management of a job evaluation scheme which has been undertaken in the Education and Library Boards (Boards) since 1995, and which has still not been completed. The scheme initially covered non-manual posts, but in 1998 the Single Status Agreement, which required the harmonisation of conditions of service for administrative staff and manual workers, brought the Boards’ manual staff within the scope of the job evaluation exercise. At 31 July 2006, a total of 28,715 posts (94 per cent of staff in affected grades) had been evaluated, comprising 12,236 former non-manual staff and 16,479 former manual staff. A total of 1,795 job evaluations are outstanding – 671 former non-manual posts and 1,124 former manual posts, while some 6795 classroom assistants whose posts are included in those evaluated, have yet to agree their claim with management.

The actual cost of the scheme is not known

NIAO was unable to establish the actual cost of the job evaluation exercise as this information cannot be provided readily by either the Boards or the Department. However, the additional funding allocated by the Department of Education (the Department) and DCAL (who took over responsibility for libraries in December 1999) gives some indication of the costs involved. Some £49 million was allocated in arrears and uplift with a further £75 million in projected funding commitments to cover up to 2007-08 for the completion of job evaluation – giving a total of some £124 million for the period of twelve years from January 1995. This figure does not include those job evaluation costs which have had to be absorbed by the Boards within their running costs and which cannot be quantified by the Department.

The timescale for the scheme has been far too long

While there were a number of factors which impacted on the completion of the job evaluation exercise the timescale has been far too long. NIAO considers that the exercise should have been managed from the outset within an agreed timeframe, with clear lines of responsibility established for completion within that timeframe. The failure to implement, from the outset, key recommendations of the agreed Action Plan, including the establishment of a centralised unit to oversee the scheme and the use of grade-related job evaluations based on generic job descriptions, was a missed opportunity for approaching the earlier implementation of the scheme in a more centralised, planned and timely basis. This was eventually recognised following the internal management review of the scheme in 1997, and the necessary steps were subsequently taken in 1999, four years after commencement, to set the scheme on a sounder basis.

Although the administration of the scheme was markedly improved after 1999 when the Central Management Support Unit was established, the legacy from some of these earlier weaknesses in implementation has continued to create difficulties for the effective management of the project. Many of the problems which arose could have been avoided or their impact minimised if the exercise had been managed properly from the outset.

Significantly more staff than originally expected have been upgraded

A pilot exercise in 1993, which indicated that some 10-15 per cent of staff would qualify for an upgrade, turned out to be flawed. As a result, the scheme was initiated on the basis of incorrect assumptions of affordability. The failure to ensure that as accurate an assessment as possible of the cost of the exercise was in place, right from the outset, combined with the absence of effective financial planning and the inability to confirm the total cost of the scheme was one of the major weaknesses of the whole process. The outcome of the exercise to date has been that 56 per cent of the former non-manual staff and almost all of the former manual staff have been upgraded on evaluation, although the manual staff were not part of the pilot exercise. Regrading has been backdated to 1 January 1995 and 1 January 2002 for former non-manual and former manual staff respectively. The extent of the backdating involved has meant that in many cases substantial amounts of arrears were due.

A planned staff inspection programme was not implemented but equal pay claims were avoided

There is also a concern that, because the substantial cost of the job evaluation exercise was not properly recognised at the outset, insufficient attention was paid to securing the potential value for money benefits which should have accompanied expenditure on this scale. In particular, by failing to put in place a staff inspection function as part of the exercise as originally planned by the Boards, an opportunity was missed to establish a strong link to efficiency and productivity.

The report is not questioning the need for the job evaluation exercise nor has it sought to second guess the outcome of individual evaluations. The Department of Education which is ultimately responsible for setting the education budgets for the Boards and approving their annual spending plans considers that an important issue is the cost of not doing job evaluation and that this exercise has protected the public purse from unnecessary litigation due to potentially expensive equal pay claims.

The cost of job evaluation contributed to financial pressures in two Boards

The report also found that the financial implications of the unexpectedly high levels of upgrading of former non-manual staff in the Library Service and schools, and the financial impact of the unforeseen extension of the scheme to former manual staff in schools, contributed to the financial pressures which resulted in major overspends in 2003-04 in two Boards. The Department told us that there is no evidence to support this view and that the level of expenditure on areas such as classroom assistants and special education led to the overspends. It added, that the funding provided was based on estimates submitted by the five Boards, that evidence indicates that the funding was sufficient in the other three Boards that did not have specific financial management difficulties and, indeed, none of the Boards subsequently advised that their estimates were miscalculated or that the funding provided was insufficient. However, as the Boards have been unable to ascertain the actual costs of the scheme there is no way of confirming that the funding provided was adequate and covered all job evaluation costs. In addition, specific comments in the Jack Review into financial management in the two Boards support our conclusion.