In 2010, the Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco) embarked on a job regrading exercise that ended in some job grades being elevated while others were lowered. This raised many questions amongst Meatco employees surrounding the issue.

Job grades, especially those that came out lower, became a topical issue at the monthly Management/Shop Steward meetings. For this reason, the Employee Relations and Wellness office through the Human Resources (HR) department took the initiative to educate Shop Stewards, HR staff and line managers by way of training held on 2 August 2017, to create a better understanding of how a job evaluation process in an organisation is analysed.

The training had a good outcome

Job evaluation is the process of assessing the relative worth of a job or position in an organisation, using an objective and reliable rating system.

Organisational Psychologist Graham van Staden of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) conducted the one-day training, highlighting aspects such as work complexity and decision making levels that are influencing factors for job grading. He outlined that through the job evaluation processes, organisations establish a job’s ranking in terms of where that particular job should be placed within its structure. Job evaluation also provides a rational basis for designing or maintaining a fair pay structure in cases of employee job description amendments to ensure that there is a comparable benchmark of the organisation’s jobs against those in the market.

Organisational Psychologist Graham van Staden