Job description review frequency, consistency in role grading and grading discrepancies for GoJ staff

​Request 717040750

1. Job Description Review Frequency

How often are job descriptions reviewed for employees across Government of Jersey departments?

2. Consistency in Role Grading – Personal Assistants

What measures or criteria are used to ensure consistency in grading for roles with similar responsibilities—specifically:

o How does the Government determine that a Personal Assistant at Grade 6 is equivalent in scope and complexity to one at Grade 7 or 8?

o Are competency frameworks or job evaluation tools used to support grading decisions?

3. Grading Discrepancies Across Similar Roles

For all departments, please provide a breakdown of roles with the same or similar job titles (e.g., Personal Assistant, Administrator, Officer, Analyst) that exist at multiple grades. For example:

o In the Health Department, how many Personal Assistant roles exist at Grades 6, 7, and 8?

o Please list all departments and roles where the same job title is graded at different levels, with the number of staff in each grade.

Response

1. 

In accordance with the employer’s policy on job evaluation​ Job Descriptions qualify for re-evaluation or evaluation, when the following criteria are met:

• the job or post is newly created

• there has been a significant and permanent change in the work and responsibilities of the job and re-evaluation is sought by the line manager and agreed by the Human Resources Business Partner. This applies equally to a reduction as well as an increase in the requirements of the job

• there is a restructuring or re-organisation of tasks and duties within a team or department which has an impact on the post

Roles will not be re-evaluated within a rolling period of 12 months and must meet the criteria for significant change.

Significant changes in the post will need to be substantiated and agreed by the Senior Leadership Team representative and the Human Resources Business Partner to justify re-evaluation of a post.

2. 

In accordance with the employer’s policy on job evaluation, the Job Evaluation Team are responsible for the administration of the job evaluation schemes and will ensure that all evaluation outcomes are quality assured, provide comparator job descriptions against other roles within the Government of Jersey, to ensure parity across Government. Similar or same job titles alone do not determine the actual job content, context as one role might handle more complex tasks or greater responsibility. 

Civil Service jobs, such as a Personal Assistant, are evaluated using the HAY methodology – this is the evaluation tool used to evaluate civil service jobs.  The HAY methodology evaluates jobs based on three core factors:  Know-How (knowledge, skills and experience), Problem Solving (complexity, decision-making) and Accountability (impact and responsibility).  This standardisation ensures every job is assessed using the same lens promoting consistency in how scope and complexity are interpreted.  

A number of line managers, HR professionals and Union colleagues have been trained in the HAY methodology and sit on panels to evaluate jobs.  In doing so, they may ‘match’ the job they are evaluating to a comparator which is deemed to be the same or very similar and will draw comparisons to other roles that are subsequently viewed as bigger or smaller than the job being evaluated.  Panels evaluate CS job up to CS grade 15 using the HAY methodology to determine the grade of the job.  Roles thought to be above grade 15 are evaluated using an independent company as are all appeals.

3. 

We are unable to provide data for ‘similar roles’ as this would be subjective and extracting and analysing the specific data required to respond to in this way would exceed the time and cost limit set out in Article 16(1) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

In Health & Care Jersey there are <5 personal assistants at Grade 6, 7 & 8

The below links to each applicable grade pay scale. 

ALA (Legal Advisor Pay Scale), CS (Civil Servant Pay Scale), EW​ (Energy from Waste Pay Scale), NM (Nurses & Midwives Pay Scale), TAF​ (Teaching Assistants Pay Scale). 

Please find in the attachment a breakdown of roles with the same job title that exist across multiple grades. Due to low numbers, we have not been able to split the data by department. 

Results.pdf​

Where numbers are below 5, disclosure control has been applied to protect the privacy of individuals and numbers fewer than five are represented as ‘<5’. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Articles applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive 

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Article 25- Personal information

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.​​