Case Study: Equal Pay - Northern Rock PLC

In 2002 Northern Rock initiated work on a pay and job evaluation system that was fair, robust, open, transparent and gender neutral. The company worked closely with union partners at each stage from the initial pay audit/review, through the investigation and recommendation stage to implementation.

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Steps taken included:

• Design of new payscales to provide structure, career pathway and progression opportunities
• Mini job assessment exercise to map existing generic roles onto the new grades
• Design of competency based framework across all grades
• Analysis of every management job within the company and rating of job based on the agreed competencies
• Map roles onto salary scales making promotions as required
• Implement specialist grade roles within IT and technical departments
• Appoint 168 staff to a higher grade as a result

The salary structure and job evaluation process has highlighted the need to focus on the job not the person, so that part-time staff are not disadvantaged The work that is completed is what is important, not the contracted hours.

Since the initial exercise was carried out, a process has been introduced that ensures that all new jobs are assessed against the competency framework to determine what grade staff should be. Staff can arrange for their own jobs to be re-assessed against the competency framework if they feel that they are being paid at the wrong level.

All criteria regarding job assessment is published to all staff so that they can view the competencies and requirements at all job grades. It has promoted a culture of openness and transparency in relation to job grades and salaries The message the company wishes to send out is that they have clear criteria to determine grades, and subsequently salary levels, and that this criteria is applied consistently. This new approach has been received positively by both staff and Union.

Maureen Henderson