Torfaen Borough Council
When Torfaen Borough Council embarked on its Single Status implementation, there was a need to use the right systems to bring accuracy and efficiency to the task. For both the job evaluation and pay modelling exercises, systems were needed that could support the Council’s objective of achieving Single Status by October 2008. For these reasons, the Council selected the computerised Job Evaluation scheme and Pay Modeller software from NorthgateArinso Reward Solutions.
The organisation
Formed as a unitary authority in 1996, Torfaen County Borough Council delivers a wide range of services, from refuse collection to housing. Services are delivered from the Council’s main offices in Pontypool and Cwmbran, and its Customer Centres and District Housing Offices. The Council sees itself as a modern, forward-looking organisation and places high importance on the recruitment and retention of talented staff.
The situation
When the Council embarked on its Single Status implementation, there was a need to use the right systems to bring accuracy and efficiency to the task. For both the job evaluation and pay modelling exercises, systems were needed that could support the Council’s objective of achieving Single Status by October 2008.
The solution
One of the first tasks in the council’s programme to achieve Single Status was a job evaluation exercise. When looking for a system to provide a time-saving alternative to manual evaluation, the council had a number of criteria.
Tina Bowen, Employee Services Manager at Torfaen, explains: “Our main objective was to find a system that could record evaluation results, but to do so in a meaningful and consistent way. It was also especially important that we had the facility to manipulate the information so that it could be checked and presented in different ways. Compensate Job Evaulation from NorthgateArinso Reward Solutions has given us all of that capability.”
Another benefit that Compensate Job Evaulation offers is its online web-native functionality. The system can be accessed from any office in the Council and indeed from home, which fits in with the way that it is sometimes used. In addition, the hosted solution also has enough capacity to handle the 1,300-plus evaluations that have been completed by Torfaen.
One of the things that has impressed Tina Bowen has been the system’s flexibility: “Each user can tailor the screens to meet their own needs, whether that means changing the information or the way it’s presented. For example, I have configured my unique home page to show charts that give me an instant view of progress in terms of evaluations in progress or completed. It also shows how each individual HR team member is working through their allocated evaluations.”
Valuable data for pay modelling
With the system in place, Tina and her team have been able to work out the relative size of each job, and then rank them based on a number of criteria. The system also creates a unique identifier for each post and all the data necessary for to be used as the basis for the council’s pay modelling activity.
This data is imported into NorthgateArinso’s Pay Modeller solution, which is also being used to achieve Single Status. Using the system, Tina and her colleagues can look at the effects of increasing or decreasing grades, making changes to the way that individuals might be phased into new grades, and many scenarios to find the best solutions.
Pay Modeller is also praised highly by Tina: “It’s easy to create ‘what if?’ scenarios and then revert back to the previous model. Once the data is in the system you can model different structures at the push of a button, without having to generate large spreadsheets. It has much more flexibility in terms of modelling than our payroll system, so it’s a very valuable addition to our resources.”
Because the Council is committed to protecting employees’ salaries wherever possible, Tina has used Pay Modeller to advise line managers on how they might enhance each individual’s role in order to phase up to a job grade and pay band that will protect their salary. Clearly it won’t always be possible for managers to achieve this, but the data provided to them means they can make an informed decision.
The right tools for Single Status
The use of Compensate Job Evaulation and Pay Modeller has played a part in keeping Torfaen on course for implementing Single Status by the their target of October 2008.
Tina Bowen sums up the impact the systems have had: “Both systems are simple and straightforward ways to manage large amounts of data. We have also experienced impressive ease-of -use and reliability, with no unscheduled downtimes to delay us. We have exactly what we need to achieve Single Status, and indeed to manage our evaluation and modelling in the longer term.”
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