Job Evaluation, Technical Expertise and Dual Ladders in Research and Development Available to Purchase

The problem of how to weight technical expertise is familiar to anyone concerned with the design and implementation of company job evaluation schemes, and nowhere is this problem more acute than in Research and Development (R & D) departments. Here, typically, there are large numbers of highly qualified technical specialists who both deserve and demand promotion on the basis of their technical contribution. Yet, because technical staff have relatively few of the kind of responsibilities which carry high weighting on most job evaluation schemes, they rarely warrant higher grading on conventional criteria. And where they are promoted, their excellence as scientists wins them promotion into research management. In a recent study conducted by the author, concerning the reasons why R&D staff in a large UK company sought posts elsewhere in the organisation, the belief that promotion was easier to get outside R&D was one of the most important factors. A dual ladder system may offer a partial solution to this problem. By a dual ladder is meant the establishment of two parallel hierarchies within R & D: a management ladder and a ladder for technical specialists. The two ladders carry different responsibilities but equivalent rewards and status. In theory, at least, a distinction is made between responsibility for resources, located on the management ladder, and responsibility for technical merit, located on the technical ladder.