What are grade records?

Stand Alone Grades

Used to group types of staff without  associating a monetary value to the grade, although it may be that the grade would be within a salary range.

Knowledge Bite: All managers may be a grade A, while assistants may be a grade B. In this case, the business would be able to report on all managers across the business, and if managers fell into a salary bracket of between 30K and 50K, then the business would have a rough idea of the expected outlay on managers.

Pay Spines

Are based upon a value for a point and each grade can represent either one or more points.

Knowledge Bite: Common examples can be found within Local Authorities, the Health Service, and the Civil Service. An example would be where a Grade A is associated to a single point 5, Grade B to points 3 to 4 and Grade C to points 1 to 4, where the points go up in value: Point 1 = 15000 Point 2 = 15750 Point 3 = 16250 Point 4 = 16999 Point 5 = 17500 This could allow progressive upward movement dependant upon the rules, and the Grade Spine range.

Grade Additions

Allow the attachment of a number of Addition Headings to a Grade, with their own specific value. This value can be either an annual amount or an hourly rate. Once the grade has been attached to the employee, then that employee automatically derives these values.

Spine Point Additions

Are payments that can be attached to an individual spine point on a payslip. Once the spine point is attached to an employee, then the employee automatically attracts these values. For more information attaching spine points to employees, see How Do I Assign Spine Points to Posts?

Grade Name

Enter a name to identify the grade.

Description

Enter a description to identify the grade.

Access Level

This field is used for security purposes.

Standard Weeks

This value automatically appears as it is usually identified at Job level.

Standard Days

This value automatically appears as it is usually identified at Job level.

Standard Hours

This value automatically appears as it is usually identified at Job level.

Grade Is Active

This field is used to signify to the system that the grade can be used. If this is not selected then the system will not recognise this grade and ignore it against an employee. This check box is useful if setting up new grades before they are required, as you can leave this field blank until the grade is activated.

Increment Periodicity

This field identifies when the next increment is due and is a drop down selection of: Annual, Six Monthly, Three Monthly, Three Yearly, Two Yearly. Please note that this is non user amendable. This is used when Anniversary Increment Processing is specified. So when an employee has been in post for this length of time the Increment Process will automatically be triggered.

Notice Period

Enter the value for the Notice Period and select from the drop down whether the period is in days, weeks, months , or years.

Probation Period

Enter the value for the Probation Period and select from the drop down whether the period is in days, weeks, months , or years.

Note: If the Probationary Period is specified, the Incremental Process won’t happen until after the probation period. From a fixed date point of view, it either doesn’t happen at all, if you are not there yet or it is post-dated until after your probation. This depends if the Post date increment where minimum months not met option is selected on the Pay Spine record.

Pay Spine

If the Grade is to be used in conjunction with Pay Spines, then you must select the Pay Spine to which the Grade is associated.

Minimum Spine Point
Maximum Spine Point

Once the Pay Spine is selected, you can then associate the Grade to a single point or a range on the Pay Spine by selecting a Minimum and Maximum point.

Note: You can only view those points associated to that particular Pay Spine. If you wish to select just one point, then enter that point into both the Minimum and Maximum fields.

Discretionary Spine point

This field is used as a break point within a range. For example, if your range of points is 1 to 10 and employees have an automatic increment between 1 and 5 but must have passed a test or meet certain criteria before moving up, then point 6 could be entered into the Discretionary Spine Point field, and the system would stop the incremental process at this point, thus requiring you to manually move the employee through the remaining points of the range on the employee's Grade History form.

Exclude From Spine Point Increment Processing

Select this option to exclude the grade from the process of incrementing the spine point. If this is selected, then you would need to manually change an employee's point in their Post History record.