A year ago, in July 2021, a review of the Probation Job Evaluation Scheme process was carried out jointly with trade unions. The review identified a number of recommendations and a central Job Evaluation Management Group (JEMG) was established to oversee the implementation of these recommendations.

A short-term recommendation of the review was a mapping exercise, which identified roles that were a high priority for job evaluation. Roles most urgently needing to go through the job evaluation process were placed in the Priority 1 group.

You can find out more about the Job Evaluation Scheme and the JES Review 2021 on the Probation Hub.

The job evaluations for roles within this first category are now complete and the PWP Job Evaluation project team would like to use this opportunity to share their thanks with those involved; we know it hasn’t always been a straightforward process.

Our priority as we reach this milestone is to look at how we can make improvements to the JES process. We are going to be working with the Strategy and Improvement team within PWP to look at the lessons learnt over the past year and the insight we can gain from the experience of stakeholders who have been involved with JES so far. If you would like to support and contribute to the lessons learned exercise, please contact Sheridan Percival (sheridan.percival@justice.gov.uk).

Work on Priority 2 roles has commenced; these are roles where an urgent business need for job evaluation has been identified – there are 13 roles in this group. Steady progress is being made and focus groups for some roles have already started. We expect work on P2 roles to progress throughout the remainder of this year and we will be implementing feedback and lessons learnt from the P1 group on an ongoing basis.