Warrington Borough Council
As with other local authorities in the UK, Warrington Borough Council were faced with the challenge of reviewing the previous pay and grading structure within the council to arrive at an updated structure that would comply with the requirements of Single Status agreement. Warrington purchased both the Pay Modeller and Equal Pay Reviewer software at the outset of their Reward Project.
The Organisation
Warrington Borough Council employs 8,500 people and supplies public services to a population in the North West of approximately 195,000.
The Challenge
As with other local authorities in the UK, Warrington Borough Council were faced with the challenge of reviewing the previous pay and grading structure within the council to arrive at an updated structure that would comply with the requirements of Single Status agreement.
The Solution
Warrington BC purchased both the Pay Modeller and Equal Pay Reviewer software applications from NorthgateArinso Reward Solutions at the outset of their Job Evaluation Project. As Steve Bennett, Project Manager at the council describes:
"Although the purchase of the software is not something I would normally have done so early into a project, in hindsight it has proved to be beneficial. Whilst we were not ready to fully utilise the software in the early stages, as we did not have the necessary data downloads, we were able to establish with our IT teams exactly what data would be needed. Consequently, we were able to test a range of data sets to ensure a smooth transfer of information in the future.
Even though we had key people trained in the use and application of the software, I made a decision that it would assist us greatly to have an ongoing consultancy service from NorthgateArinso Reward Solutions.
This has proved to be a vitally important decision as the advice and guidance provided by them has been invaluable in saving time. It has also helped us to focus on key areas relating to the development of our pay and grading structure.
Overall, this has been a very cost effective decision as we have been able to move quickly to a position of testing a wide range of grading structures and we were able to easily identify the best fit for the organisation. The consultancy service we have received has been of the highest standard and this has enabled us to build effective working relationships with NorthgateArinso.
When we started working with NorthgateArinso Reward Solutions they were known as Link HR and although a takeover took place during the relationship, this had no impact on the service we received. One final point that reinforces the decision to engage NorthgateArinso Reward Solutions is that our pay modelling process recently underwent an audit review by our internal audit team. The following quotes are taken from the final Audit Report:
‘The NorthgateArinso system can provide a full audit trail of changes made. These can be identified at an appropriate level of detail (i.e. what field has been changed, new value entered).’
‘As stated above, our sample testing indicated that basic pay costs appear to have been accurately recorded on NorthgateArinso, as per the import files.’
All data is easily downloaded into the Equal Pay Reviewer, enabling us to undertake a meaningful equality impact assessment before presenting our final package to the Council and trade unions. We are therefore fully satisfied that we will be implementing an equal pay proofed pay and grading structure."
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