The City of Edinburgh Council

Read how pay modelling was crucial to The City of Edinburgh Council implementation of Single Status.

The City of Edinburgh Council implemented the national Single Status agreement within a Modernising Pay package of terms and conditions in October 2010. This include the implementation of a new pay and grading structure for over 15,000 employees.

Central to the process was an extensive pay modelling activity using NorthgateArinso’s Pay Modeller solution.

Data from the job evaluation exercise in combination with payroll data, was fed into Pay Modeller and used to create detailed cost projections, which in turn were used as part of overall department budget activity. Management reports were also produced at a more detailed level for directors of each service area to examine the individual outcome of the exercise.

The pay modelling work was completed by the Council’s in house Finance team, but with direct support from NorthgateArinso’s Senior Reward Consultants. This support included detailed design and modelling of many scenarios filtered down to the final solution.

Alasdair Black, the Council’s Finance Manager, found Pay Modeller to be a very effective solution: “It gave the Council an excellent feel for the costs of the new pay structure and the impacts on certain groups of staff, as well as overall projections. It also provided assurance that departments will remain within budget as the new pay structures are rolled out.
 
“It’s easy to redefine report criteria and run reports quickly. This reporting functionality provided very useful during discussions with trade unions about proposed changes to grade boundaries, and enabled us to provide information at an individual employee level.”

“Pay Modeller has ensured excellent transparency as the Council has been able to demonstrate the fairness of the changes to specific groups, such as part timers, males, females, and so on.”

“The solution itself is very user friendly and, with the excellent training and support provided by NorthgateArinso, we were able to get up and running with Pay Modeller very quickly. Its usability and comprehensive features mean that it was heavily relied on within the Council as the main tool for making projections and producing reports about pay for the Project.”

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