Job grading: a practical guide to job evaluation and classification

“Is my job worth the same as Victoria’s?” Under the EU Pay Transparency Directive, employees can ask for the average pay levels for work of equal value to their own, broken down by sex. To answer that question, you first need to know which jobs in your organisation are of equal value. Yet in France, 48% of companies don’t have a formal salary structure (Figures HR & employee survey, 2026).

Job grading (also called job evaluation) means assessing every role against the same criteria, then placing roles of equal value in the same grade. This guide takes you from a blank page to salary bands you can explain, without pushing you towards any particular method.

What you’ll learn

• What the Directive requires, and what it doesn’t: four mandatory factors, but no prescribed method.
• Which job evaluation method to choose: Hay, Mercer, WTW, Deloitte, Gradar, EIGE or an in-house approach, compared by company profile.
• How to get started without chasing perfection: a 13-step checklist, and the pitfalls that stall most projects.
• How to turn your grades into salary bands: midpoint, range spread and overlap between levels.
• How to handle right-to-information requests: two ready-to-use scripts for tricky pay conversations.