Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A Complainant

A Public Health Authority

Representatives

none 

none 

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

CA-00037681-001

18/06/2020

The Complainant applied for a re-evaluation of her grade through the Job Evaluation Scheme which was agreed between the relevant union and public health authority at a national level. The Complainant was successful in moving up a grade and sought feedback on her application as to why she was not upgraded to higher grade.

The Complainant submitted that she was entitled to feedback from the reviewers as to how the decision was arrived to upgrade her position from a Grade 5 to a Grade 6. It is her case that she ought to have been assigned a Grade 7 or Grade 8 upon which she stated her role, responsibilities and job evaluation were based. She outlined her responsibilities at the hearing.

She stated that the job evaluators commented that they had never seen received such a broad and comprehensive application form. She submitted that other staff with lesser roles had been given the same grade as her.

The Complainant stated that the process took two years and she has been at a financial disadvantage as well having her career development hampered as a consequence of been reassigned to a Grade 6 position.

The Complainant requested an appeal from the HR Department but was told that no such appeal mechanism was available to her. She further submits that upon further enquires she was told that there was in fact an appeal available.

The HR Manager along with the Complainant’s Line Managers were very complimentary of the Complainant and her work. It was repeated on several occasions that the scheme was focused on the role not the person.

It was the Respondent’s case that the Job Evaluation Scheme was a nationally agreed scheme that was put in place to objectively review grades of employees of the health authority. The Job Evaluation Scheme 2016 was an independent and jointly administered by External Management and Union partners.

It was open to parties to apply for a review of their grade and in doing so, agreed to the terms and conditions of the scheme. One such condition was that unless there was a procedural flaw in the manner the process was carried out there was no other appeal mechanism available.

Circular 14/2016 was relied on and in particular, 7.3 which states:-

“Where it is alleged that procedures have not been complied with, a review of the procedures can take place by two evaluators unconnected with the original job evaluation. Such a review will not extend to an examination of the rationale for the scoring of posts. The judgement of the Evaluation Team in scoring posts is not open to appeal other than where it is claimed that procedural issues associated with the evaluation have not been complied with. In such circumstances, where it is held that there have been procedural flaws relating to the particular evaluation exercise, a fresh evaluation shall be undertaken by an alternative evaluation team.”

The Respondent did not receive an appeal identifying procedural flaws in the process from the Complainant.

The Complainant stated in her claim form that she wanted feedback on the reasoning for evaluating her role to that of a Grade 6. Also, in the claim form and at the hearing she referred to an appeal of the decision. There appears to be confusion as to what exactly the Complainant was seeking.

Where there is a nationally agreed process in place and the Complainant cannot identify any procedural flaws in the process, the integrity of the Job Evaluation Scheme must be respected, and I have no jurisdiction to make any recommendation that would alter or contradict the scheme.

I find that the dispute is not well founded on the basis the Complainant voluntarily agreed to the terms and conditions at the outset of a nationally agreed Job Evaluation Scheme and secondly, she did not identify any procedural flaws that would allow an appeal.

Industrial Relations – Grading – Job Evaluation - Not Well Founded