Job evaluation good for public service

Every worker deserves a just wage for fair and productive labour. Teachers, doctors, nurses, police, civil service provide critical service to the nation and the people of Kenya and should be fairly remunerated.

This begs the question as to what is fair remuneration. International Labour Organisations (ILO) Convention 100 on Equal Remuneration defines "remuneration" to include ordinary, basic or minimum wage or salary and any additional emoluments payable whether cash or in kind, by the employer to the worker and arising out of the worker's employment.

There are two schools of thought regarding fairness in remuneration. Fairness in traditional organizations and fairness in contemporary organisations. In traditional organisations all employees should be treated the same when it comes to remuneration. The general expectation is that at the time of salary review, "across the board" increases should be provided and these should reflect the consumer price index movement. This school of thought does not address the age old argument. Which jobs are the most important? Which ones are worth more pay? And, how much more? Fairness in contemporary organisations on the other hand looks at the role of the individual in a job and their competence level and performance as critical factors in the determination of fair remuneration especially at salary review time.

Historically, Kenya government has undertaken several public sector pay reviews to address the issue of fair remuneration in the public service. This has, however, been done through ad hoc commissions and committees. The effect of this has been a less holistic view of the public service remuneration since the focus of these ad hoc bodies were to respond to demands for pay adjustment and most often were specific to sub sectors of the public service. The B K Kipkulei Commission was the most comprehensive and made far reaching recommendations about public service pay. Most significant of all was the establishment of the Permanent Public Service Remuneration Review Board in 2003. The Commission proposed the adoption of a new banding structure that placed the heads and top officials of the three arms of government at equivalent grades/levels. The principle of equity in the pay policy implied that the heads of the three arms and officials within the three branches were of equal grade and should more or less be equally compensated.

It was expected that the structure would evolve leading to jobs being graded and compensated equally in the public service. The policy position adopted by Permanent Public Service Remuneration Review Board tried to address the matter of "fair" remuneration in the traditional sense. While this approach was noble the Board lacked the legal framework to execute its decisions and its role was basically advisory to the government. State corporations and the then Constitutional Commissions exploited this loophole and initiated their own salary reviews rewarding their staff more competitively.

This exacerbated inequity, unfairness, and disparity- both vertical and horizontal- within the public service and has been a major source of discontent, resulting in demands for higher pay and the biggest single factor contributing to industrial unrests. A study of public private sector wage differentials in Kenya carried out by Kippra and commissioned by SRC show existence of large vertical inequalities in wages within the public sector. This is particularly severe between the lower cadres and the highest cadres.

The report recommends that the public sector wage structure should contain basic pay which reflects the value of the job; is productivity based and the need to compress the public service pay between highest and lowest paid from the current ratio of 98:1. It also recommends a public service job evaluation to determine worth of each job.