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Equal jobs on the way NEW guidelines make New Zealand a world-leader in efforts to eliminate gender bias in jobs, Department of Labour Pay and Employment Equity Unit director Philippa Hall said."The Gender-inclusive Job Evaluation Standard (the Standard) is an international first, to help ensure all employees have fair pay, treatment and employment opportunities - regardless of gender. "The Standard is a booklet with guidelines that employers can follow to be confident around job evaluation. It sets out some steps to take, and provides additional helpful hints on planning and preparing for job evaluation and reviewing outcomes. "It was developed by a Standards committee including HR companies, equity experts, and employer and employee groups," said Ms Hall, who is a committee member. "In New Zealand, women's average earnings are lower than men's - September 2006 figures show women earn 85.3 per cent of men's hourly pay packet. "Gender inequality in employment is one reason for this. It can occur when job evaluations - the process of analysing jobs and grading them to set pay rates - are poorly planned and the results aren't checked for gender bias. "This can often be unintentional, where failure to consider all the elements of a job has led to under-valuation. "Gender bias in job evaluations can occur when assumptions are made about the skills, responsibilities and demands involved in a job - and these assumptions are coloured by stereotypes about the people who usually do that work. "For example, some female-dominated jobs require skills similar to those used by women in the home, like cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. These sorts of skills are regarded as 'natural' rather than learned skills and can be underrated - resulting in a job being under-valued. "This new voluntary standard will provide access to best practice information and guidelines in a range of HR areas, which will help employers provide a level playing field for all employees. Job evaluation provider Strategic Pay's David Shannon said the Standard provides an excellent framework for the total job evaluation process. "This Standard is not merely a nod at political correctness, as some may have feared, but a very useful tool for the design and implementation of effective job evaluation processes. It will be a help, not a hindrance, in our work. CTU's Vice President Helen Kelly said that the CTU hoped all providers of job evaluation systems would ensure their schemes and systems complied with the Standard. She said unions would now be asking questions about any future use of systems that do not meet the standard set. "I imagine that now we have this Standard, employers, unions and providers will want to ensure current processes comply, and that all job evaluations conducted from now on are fair and free of discrimination." The Standard is sponsored by the Department of Labour's Pay and Employment Equity Unit. |
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