Dear All,

I have been listening in to the exchange of opinions on downgrading of 
library staff with interest, and would like to throw in the following 
opinions/observations:

1) HERA tends to value breadth over depth, as it was designed to cover 
all the roles in HE. This means that roles with breadth of content 
encompassing communication, budgetary control, managerial 
responsibilities, etc., may score higher than those with not much 
breadth but greater depth, e.g. those requiring subject expertise or 
involving research in specialised areas and not much else. Many people 
think that HAY deals better with the latter types of role.

2) Grading variations between library staff doing the same job in 
different areas may happen for a variety of reasons, e.g:

a) Since there are no standard role descriptions or profiles for posts 
such as "subject librarian", the content of these posts may in fact vary 
substantially from institution to institution, for example in terms of 
the managerial content of the role

b) The nature of the internal job evaluation process, e.g. whether role 
assessment is by interview or forms, the quality of the interviews and 
the rigour of checks on how the system is working.

Given the above, it may only be possible to establish whether gradings 
are fair by 1) ensuring that jobs compared across institutions are in 
fact identical to one another, and 2) establishing an "ideal" value for 
given posts

Eileen Tilley
User Support Librarian, Bangor University

Jill Duffin wrote:
> I conducted a survey of LIS-UCR members in October 2006.
> 
> A copy of the survey is available in the file store
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/filearea.cgi?LMGT1=LIS-UCR&X=&Y=&f=/CILIP
> 
> I had 14 completed surveys back from individual CILIP members.  The feedback I received indicated that the majority of people were still going through the process.  80% of people have transfered across to equivalent grades.  I am hoping to conduct another survey in June of this year, I am intending to use the contacts collected in the SCONUL job evaluation database by John Bagnall in 2004 to get an overview of the situation. At the end of last year the advice team met with representatives of HERA and Hay in order to get an overview of both schemes and to find out where our members were falling down.  As I mentioned in my earlier posting, there will be an article in Gazette shortly, plus we hope the material we have put on the CILIP website will be a useful starting point.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Jill Duffin
> CILIP Advice Team
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Poston [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 25 January 2007 17:33
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: HERA Job Evaluation Process
> 
> 
> Also perhaps this might be something which ought to be addressed by CILIP as well, as it also emphasises an underlying perception problem for the profession. Has CILIP made any comment on the process of HERA job evaluation, it strikes me as something that they needs to be looked at by those advocating for the profession. 
> 
> I feel this emphasises our weakness as a profession to get properly re-cognised, I was reading a dictionary in a shop the other day and it had acronyms for "Major professional bodies" and their post nominal letters of course CILIP wasn't there. Also Librarian while a  professional photographer was listed as a acceptable 'professional' to endorse / witness someone's passport photo Librarian was not listed. Of course neither of these things matter but they suggest some PR work needs to be done.
> 
> regards
> Tom
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A general Library and Information Science list for news and
> discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Callan, Mark
> Sent: 25 January 2007 14:55
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: HERA Job Evaluation Process
> 
> 
> <<Thanks to collusion between the unions and HR, a number of posts were
> singled out for red-circling in the grading 
> (rather than job evaluation) process. >>
> 
> Small reminder: a union is composed of its members. If your reps aren't
> doing their jobs, sack 'em! (Of course, that would mean someone else
> having to take their places...) And who allowed HAY in, for goodness'
> sake? Even managers are wary of it, these days (mainly because it still
> leaves them open to charges of unequal pay - which is THE issue that JE
> is supposed to address!).
> 
> Don't get mad, get organised (as we used to say on the barricades...).
> 
> Mark Callan
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A general Library and Information Science list for news and
> discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Malcolm
> Taggart
> Sent: 25 January 2007 14:25
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: HERA Job Evaluation Process
> 
> 
> Greg,
>          Leeds seems to be the most blatant example of HERA-assisted 
> downgrading of library staff. From the point of view of local interest,
> here 
> at Keele HAY was used with caution to preserve the status quo for the
> most 
> part, my own post being an exception. Thanks to collusion between the
> unions 
> and HR, a number of posts were singled out for red-circling in the
> grading 
> (rather than job evaluation) process. Our former bedfellows in
> Information 
> Services, who were re-branded as IT a year ago, have fared better than 
> library staff, but then their star is in the ascendant and ours is on
> the 
> wane.
> Malcolm Taggart
> Red-circled Sub-Librarian (Systems)
> 
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