Task A: Create a complete job description for the Benefits Manager position using O*NET. »

To design a pay structure, there must be a formal way to value the work inside the organization so that pay is awarded fairly. The job evaluation process will help develop this internal work hierarchy.

Different evaluation methods, pay strategies, and pay structures will be used for different job families in the organization. You decide to use a job-based evaluation approach for the operations, office support, and HR job families. A skills-based approach will be used for information systems and engineering job families, although it is not included as a task in this case. The security guard and director of regional operations jobs will be assigned pay rates primarily using market pricing and slotted later into the pay structure.

Company representatives from various job levels and families will periodically provide you with input during the job evaluation process. This will help you gain acceptance of the established job structure. You ask this job evaluation committee whether they agree with the specific benchmark jobs identified in the job analysis step.

The committee studies the various job titles and asks why the administrative assistant in HR is not included in the HR job family. You explain that administrative assistants perform similar tasks across departments and do not handle functional-specific tasks (e.g., HR). You suggest grouping the front-line administrative jobs in a separate job family called office support. The other job families that will be evaluated are operations and HR.

You decide to use the point method for job evaluation for operations, HR, and office support job families because it is the most commonly used job evaluation method. Next, the compensable factors, degrees and weights of each factor must be determined.

With input from the job evaluation committee and your knowledge of the organization's mission and work content, three common compensable factors are selected: skill, responsibility and effort, each having two specific sub-factors. For example, the compensable factor of skill is comprised of education level and the degree of technical skills.

You recommend weighting the skill compensable factor at 50 percent because the organization is very knowledge-intensive and depends heavily on its human capital. Responsibility is weighted 30 percent because each job has the potential to affect other jobs; and effort is assigned 20 percent because problem solving and task complexity are integral across jobs in the organization.