Audit Scotland
Aligning job evaluation and pay bands
"We have built up a strong working relationship with Watershed over many years and always receive sound advice and guidance on job evaluation, pay and grading matters."
Audit Scotland supports the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission with financial and performance auditing to ensure that Scotland's public funds are spent properly, efficiently and effectively. The organisation audits over 200 public bodies, including the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, other central governmental bodies, the NHS, Scottish councils, joint boards and further education colleges.
Watershed has worked with Audit Scotland for many years, mainly supporting the HR team on job evaluation, pay and grading. The organisation uses Watershed's proprietary job evaluation scheme and we train HR staff, provide quality assurance, validate internal work and support the evaluation of senior positions where required. Audit Scotland operates a partnership model towards its engagement with the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and so our work has included the training of union representatives in job evaluation and assisting with employee relations activity in the field of reward structures.
Most recently, Audit Scotland asked Watershed to help align the job evaluation scheme with a new pay structure that uses broad bands and pay zones. We evaluated the new band profiles, replacing narrowly defined job descriptions, to establish new points ranges for each band and pay zone. This ensured that the job evaluation accurately reflected the demands of the band profiles; that is, the knowledge, risk, complexity and accountability in the various roles that make up each band.
David Blattman, Human Resources and Organisational Development Manager said "We have built up a strong working relationship with Watershed over many years and always receive sound advice and guidance on job evaluation, pay and grading matters. For this project, I was particularly pleased that Watershed was able to use its job evaluation scheme to underpin the new band and pay zone structure because these are central to bringing to life the new ways of working that we require at Audit Scotland.”