Factor Comparison definition

A scientific method designed to rank job roles based on a breakdown of factors rather than the role as a whole. The ultimate goal of factor comparison is to assign the relative parts of each job role a financial value i.e. the amount of compensation offered for that part of the role.

Factor comparison breaks down a job into a small number of key factors, such as skills, effort, knowledge and responsibilities. The next stage is to identify benchmark jobs, which are well-known positions that retain consistency across different companies and organisations. Each job is then assigned a salary, which is further broken down for each factor.

Advantages of factor comparison include its broad application – it can be applied to a wide range of job roles and industries, and can also be applied to new roles in order to compare them to similar positions. Distilling the value of the job in monetary terms can also help organisations make sure their recruitment methods provide a decent ROI. One of the main disadvantages is that someone has to make a decision on the relative worth of each factor e.g. someone may believe knowledge is worth more than skills and give this factor ‘too much’ salary.