This NHS Staff Council event took place on Thursday 18 March 2010 at The British Library, London and focused on:
- the importance of evaluating jobs robustly and consistently
- understanding the implications of the recent Ms Hartley and Others v Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Others employment tribunal judgement in the context of best practice at local level
- emphasising the importance of working in partnership between management and staff side-trade union representatives.
Delegates also attended four workshops on the following areas:
Key themes that were discussed these workshops were:
- Identifying best practice for panels in order for quality data to be available and consistency monitoring to be undertaken
- Examining what consistency monitoring is occurring locally, regionally and nationally
- Identifying significant concerns in consistency monitoring
- Best practice in using CAJE and resource documents
- The effects of mergers/reorganisations
- Importance of embedding delivery within organisations, not just in HR
- Ensuring commitment 'from the top' to the Agenda for Change and partnership working
- Engaging with line managers
- Desktop and advertising procedures
- The use of national resources
- Callenging issues around external training provision
- Understanding CAJE and how it works
- Recruiting 'fresh blood' and ensuring processes are properly resourced
- Matching and evaluating job descriptions
- Possible reasons for rewriting or amending job descriptions
- Identifying difficult information to outline in a job description/person description for matching and providing solutions to these issues
- Identifying the kind of language that may confuse or mislead panels
- How to ensure the range and levels of skills and competencies required for the job are included in person specifications, rather than years of experience
- How often to review job descriptions
- How to quality assure job descriptions for matching purposes
- Providing managers with 'check sheets' to ensure job descriptions are well written and include all the relevant information
- Instilling strong principles of partnership working in order for job evaluation to be used as an effective tool for modernising jobs
- Concerns over the downgrading of some jobs during widespread organisational change
- Ensuring strong leadership for effective job evalution
- Raising the profile of job evaluation
- Succession planning for JE practitioners and trainers
- Time-out and backfill for both management and staff involved in JE
- The role of job evaluation in in organisational change and workforce development
- Stronger links to learning and the change process
- Creating case studies to help in developing roles
The presentations from the event are available to download from the 'related documents' section of this page.
If you did not get the chance to fill in an evaluation form, we would still welcome your comments and feedback on the day. The evaluation form is available to download and can either be emailed to marketing@nhsemployers.org or faxed to 08447744165.