Back in June, we explained that the National Job Evaluation Project was being jointly progressed across seven key areas of activity:
- The Business Plan
- Creating a Project Board and Governance structure
- College Preparatory Work
- Engagement of a Job Evaluation Scheme provider to carry out the role evaluations
- Completion of Robust Job Descriptions
- Pay and Grading
- Appeals.
Work has been progressing behind the scenes on all of these activities over the last few months, with the main focus being gathering all of the information and costings required to complete the Business Case. This Business Case is an essential document, setting out what the project is about, the benefits of it, and the details on how it will be delivered and how much the project is expected to cost.
We are targeting that the Business Case should be drafted by around mid-September, and then after being agreed between the Trade Unions and the College Employers, it will be submitted to the Scottish Funding Council and the Scottish Government for approval of the funding.
With approval of funding secured, the project can move on to gathering the evidence around role evaluation, which is based on robust Job Descriptions, and many of you will be involved in that, in the coming months. With thousands of roles across the college sector to be evaluated, current and historical, that will be a very large undertaking, but as those begin to be produced, analysis can then commence with the support of expert external resource.
Invariably, as there always are with projects of this scale, there are challenges and hurdles to be addressed, and we are facing some of those, for example we have recently understood that external procurement aspects of the project will require new submissions, but that is no less than is appropriate where public money is funding the project. Also, as the project has a long history, dating back to 2018, understanding all of the roles that require evaluating and the changes to roles, new and evolved, over that time that also need evaluating is a complex exercise, but the colleges are underway with that.