How do we determine the relative size of our roles? A practical guide to job evaluation

08th June 2026

Julia Hanna

I’ve spent more than 20 years helping organisations develop reward strategies, benchmark pay and design job architecture frameworks. In this series, I answer some of the most common questions I hear from HR and business leaders.

At some point, every organisation faces a difficult question: ‘How do we know whether one role is bigger than another?’

It’s a question that sits at the heart of pay structures, career pathways, grading frameworks and equal pay. The answer is job evaluation and career levels.

Put simply, job evaluation is a structured way of assessing the relative size of roles within an organisation. The goal isn’t to determine how well someone performs their job. Nor is it about how much a job is paid, roles of the same size can be paid differently. It’s to understand the relative size of the job itself.

Why does job evaluation matter?

Without a clear framework, decisions about role levels and pay grades can become subjective. One manager might argue that their team deserves a higher grade than another. Another may focus on technical expertise. Someone else may focus on budget responsibility.

Job evaluation provides a consistent framework for making those decisions.

Done well, it helps organisations:

Create fair and transparent pay structures
Support equal pay compliance
Build career pathways
Improve consistency across departments
Reduce subjectivity in grading decisions

In many organisations, job evaluation becomes the foundation upon which wider reward and people frameworks are built.

What does good job evaluation look like?

There are many different approaches. Some use highly detailed points-based systems with complex calculations. Others use simpler job classification frameworks.

Over the years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that simpler approaches are often the most effective. That’s because people understand them.

If managers and employees can’t explain how roles have been assessed, confidence in the framework quickly disappears.

In my view, the best job evaluation frameworks are:

Clear
Transparent
Easy to explain
Consistently applied
Relevant to the organisation

A framework doesn’t need hundreds of points and weightings to be robust. It simply needs to be analytical in format and provide a fair and defensible way of assessing jobs.

Learning from real organisations

One of the best-known examples in the UK is the NHS Agenda for Change framework. This uses a structured methodology to assess jobs consistently across a very large and complex workforce.

Whilst few organisations need a framework of that scale, it demonstrates the importance of having a consistent approach to evaluating roles.

Many organisations today are moving towards broader job architecture frameworks that connect job evaluation with career pathways, skills frameworks and pay structures.

Common mistakes

Making it too complicated – complexity is often mistaken for rigour. In reality, overly technical frameworks can reduce understanding and acceptance.
Having too many levels – one of the most common issues I encounter is excessive grading structures. The more levels you create, the harder it becomes to distinguish between them.
Unbalanced frameworks – most organisations have ‘managerial’ and ‘technical’ or ‘individual contributor’ roles. Ensuring all types of roles are equally represented and sized is key.
Evaluating people instead of jobs – job evaluation assesses the role. It does not assess the capability, experience or performance of the individual doing it. This distinction is critical.
Using pay to determine levels – higher pay does not necessarily mean a larger role. The objective size of the role based on clear factors is key. Higher pay can be driven by performance, skills shortage or expertise.

My golden rule

Avoid having too many job levels. Each level should be clearly distinct and easily understood. If managers struggle to explain the difference between two adjacent grades, there are probably too many.

For many organisations, around five broad levels is often enough to provide clarity while still supporting career progression.

Looking beyond pay

One of the most overlooked benefits of job evaluation is that it can support much more than pay. A well-designed framework can help organisations:

Clarify career pathways
Support talent development
Improve workforce planning
Define expectations at different levels
Strengthen succession planning

When linked with competency frameworks and career pathways, job evaluation becomes a powerful organisational tool.

The takeaway

Job evaluation doesn’t have to be about bureaucracy. It can create a shared understanding of how roles relate to one another.

When employees understand role levels and managers have confidence in grading decisions, organisations are far better placed to create fair, transparent and sustainable reward frameworks.

This article is part of Verditer’s Reward Essentials Series, exploring the questions that sit behind effective reward management. This series includes:

How we can help

At Verditer, we are specialists in pay foundations including creating career levels, carrying out pay benchmarking and developing pay structures . Contact us if you’re looking for external expertise.

Follow our LinkedIn company page and sign up for our newsletter to hear about future blogs.

Related Insights

How do we decide our approach to reward? A practical guide to reward strategy

Part of Verditer's Reward Essentials Series, exploring the questions that sit behind effective reward management.

How do we know what the market pays? A practical guide to pay benchmarking

Part of Verditer's Reward Essentials Series, exploring the questions that sit behind effective reward management.

Business people talking in cafe - pay and reward consultancy

Contact us

Get in touch today

We’d love to hear from you. To find out how we can partner to get more out of reward, please enter your details below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.