Job evaluation and work of equal value: a small-employer guide
How to compare different roles using skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions, the four criteria in the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
Equal pay for the same work is intuitive. Equal pay for work of equal value is harder: a warehouse lead and an office coordinator do different jobs that may still be worth the same. Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2023/970 asks employers to have pay structures that make this comparison possible, using objective, gender-neutral criteria.
The four criteria
- Skills: knowledge, training and experience the role needs.
- Effort: mental and physical effort, including concentration and pressure.
- Responsibility: for people, money, equipment, customers or safety.
- Working conditions: physical environment, hours, travel, emotional load.
The directive also allows other factors where relevant to the specific job. Where workers' representatives exist, criteria are agreed with them.
A simple scoring method
Score each role, not each person, from 1 to 5 on each criterion. Write one sentence for each score so the next person scores the same way. Add up the scores. Roles with similar totals form one grade.
Example: a customer service agent scores 3, 3, 2, 2 (total 10). A junior bookkeeper scores 3, 2, 3, 1 (total 9). They can sit in the same grade even though the jobs look different.
Traps that skew results
Physical strength scored high while emotional effort is ignored is a classic source of gender bias. So is scoring the person in the job instead of the job. Test your scheme: if roles mostly held by women all end up lower, check whether a criterion is missing.
From scores to salary bands
Each grade gets a minimum, midpoint and maximum. Those bands feed the pay range in your job ads and the categories you need for pay information requests and, from 100 workers, gender pay gap reporting. The pay structure wizard walks you through scoring and banding, with a free preview.
Sources
Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2023/970 on EUR-Lex. See our methodology for how we check facts.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need a consultant for job evaluation?
- Not necessarily. A small employer can score a handful of roles on the four criteria and document the reasoning. Get advice for disputes or complex structures.
- Should I score the job or the person?
- The job. Individual performance and experience matter for where someone sits within a band, not for which grade the role belongs to.
- What if workers' representatives exist?
- The directive says the criteria are agreed with workers' representatives where they exist.
This article provides structure and general information, not legal advice.
Guides
- Salary bands for small companies: a practical guide
A practical 6-step method for building salary bands in a small company: roles, objective criteria, grades, width and outliers.
- Pay progression criteria: how to write them for a small company
Article 6 of the EU Pay Transparency Directive asks for objective, gender-neutral pay and progression criteria. A practical way to write them, with examples.
- Pay information request: employer reply template
An employee asks for average pay by gender for their role? What to disclose, the deadline, and a free reply template for small employers.