Why did the Council undertake a enchmarking review?
It is necessary to ‘pilot’ the chosen schemes and develop local rules applicable for Plymouth City Council. This is called ‘benchmarking’ in job evaluation. 85 jobs from across the council took part in ‘benchmarking’ between March and August 2006. The purpose of the ‘benchmarking’ review was so that the Council and the trade unions could try out the job evaluation schemes that will be used during the pay and grading review and ensure that they are used correctly to evaluate people’s jobs. The ‘benchmarking’ review was a joint exercise with the trade unions and involved a team of job analysts who interviewed job holders and collected information about what people do and then evaluated jobs using either the NJC or Hay job evaluation schemes. This process has helped the Council to develop the job evaluation procedures and the local rules or ‘conventions’ that will be used during the full pay and grading review.
