Why public service should embrace job evaluations

Opinion and Analysis

President Uhuru Kenyatta. PHOTO | FILE 

By DANIEL OGUTU

In Summary

• Fairness and transparency must be observed in determining remuneration to realise efficiency in organisations.

Every worker deserves a just wage for fair and productive labour. Teachers, doctors, nurses, police, civil servants provide critical service to the nation and they should therefore be fairly remunerated. This begs the question as to what is fair remuneration.

The ILO Convention 100 on Equal Remuneration broadly defines “remuneration” to include ordinary, basic or minimum wage or salary and any additional emoluments payable directly or indirectly, whether cash or in kind, by the employer to the worker and arising out of the worker’s employment.

Labour scholars and experts have traditionally looked at fairness of remuneration in two ways: Fairness in traditional organisations 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 one may question: 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, the Kenyan 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 BK 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.

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 unrest.