Ladders and Assessments

The initial version of ladder design and assessments is done. Huzzah!

  • Migrated the original prototype.
  • Updated and integrated ladders and assessments with positions and employee records.
  • Revised unit tests for ladder level calculation.

Professional Ladders

In Basis HR, a professional ladder establishes the criteria used to assess an employee.

  • Criteria may be based on industry expectations and organizational strategy.
  • The career path is obvious and transparent.
  • Pay may be derived through objective assessments rather than useless "performance evaluations".

Career Path

One significant benefit of the ladder approach is the ability to promote employees along a technical or vocational path rather than up the chain of command. This allows growth that is personally rewarding to the individual while insuring that organizational objectives are adequately supported.

Besides promotion up the rungs of a professional ladder, a potential career path may also be established.

Integrating Pay Grades

We don't like pay grades. They are a relic of HR that promotes subjective pay ranges that lead to unfair compensation. This damages morale and leads to expensive turn-over for the organization.

Nevertheless, we understand that pay grades are a convention of HR that may be required. Basis HR implements two kinds pay grades:

  1. Legacy grades: These represent the current pay grades. They may not reflect market-based pay, but are included to capture the current state.
  2. Position/ladder grades: These represent what grades should be.

Position grades are used for those positions that do not (or cannot) use a professional ladder. They provide a default. Ladder grades are a mapping of a pay grade range (preferably driven by market data) where each level of the ladder receives a specific compensation amount from within the range.

Assessments

An assessment is the objective ranking of employee capability and contribution based on pre-defined ladder criteria. Gone are the days of scalar (and meaningless) performance metrics found in the typical performance evaluation.

There are four types of assessments.

  1. Self-Assessment
  2. Coach Assessment
  3. Formal (Supervisor) Assessment
  4. Official (Supervisor) Assessment

Each assessment results in the level at which the employee has reached on a specific professional ladder. However, only the Official Assessment results in the level being "locked in" for establishing the employee's compensation.

Conclusion

The completed functionality for ladders and assessments is yet another major milestone in the development of Basis HR. Organizations may now use the tool to define the organization and assess employees based on the organization's needs.

Next month: Testing and deployment.