(a) Job evaluation and internal equity (10 marks) (b) Impact of traditional job specifications (10 marks) (c) Impact of…

(a) Job Evaluation and Internal Equity

Job evaluation is the systematic process of assessing the relative worth of different jobs within an organization to establish a rational pay structure. Internal equity represents the perceived fairness of compensation among employees, ensuring that pay differentials reflect variations in job complexity, duties, skill requirements, and working conditions rather than arbitrary factors.

Methodologies such as qualitative systems (ranking and job grading) and quantitative systems (point-factor method and factor comparison) operationalize this evaluation. By assigning objective values to compensable factors like responsibility, physical effort, and decision-making authority, the organization establishes a clear, transparent job hierarchy.

The causal mechanism links systematic evaluation directly to employee behavior: when workers perceive pay parity relative to peers performing comparable tasks, it eliminates feelings of relative deprivation, enhances organizational justice, boosts intrinsic motivation, and reduces voluntary turnover. Consequently, integrating dynamic job evaluations with evolving role descriptions remains essential for sustaining long-term internal equity and workforce retention.

(b) Impact of Traditional Job Specifications

Traditional job specifications delineate the minimum human qualities—prescribed educational degrees, rigid years of linear experience, and static credentials—historically deemed necessary for task execution.

By prioritizing rigid tenure and formal qualifications over demonstrable skills, traditional specifications create artificial entry barriers. This mechanically filters out non-traditional candidates, self-taught talent, and underrepresented demographics, severely impeding workplace diversity and inclusion. Furthermore, these static profiles constrain organizational agility: employees compartmentalized into narrow, hyper-specialized job descriptions resist cross-functional deployment, creating operational bottlenecks when market environments shift.

In contrast, contemporary competency-based specifications focus on observable behaviors, cognitive problem-solving capabilities, and transferable soft skills. Shifting from credential-heavy traditional profiles to competency-driven architectures allows organizations to enhance talent utilization, adapt workflows rapidly to technological disruption, and build an inclusive, performance-oriented workforce.

(c) Impact of Absenteeism

Absenteeism refers to the habitual, unannounced failure of employees to report for scheduled work, generating cascading disruptions across the operational value chain.

The primary impact is direct productivity loss: idle machinery and understaffed production lines halt sequential processes. To prevent delivery defaults, management is compelled to deploy overtime shifts or hire inexperienced contract labor, escalating direct payroll expenses. Furthermore, relying on ad-hoc substitute workers impairs process consistency, driving up defect rates, machine breakdowns, and customer returns. Indirectly, absenteeism imposes an unfair operational burden on present employees who must absorb excess workloads, inducing occupational fatigue, declining morale, and triggering further withdrawal behaviors.

In Indian manufacturing clusters, such as textiles and automotive ancillaries, absenteeism rises sharply during harvest and festival seasons, especially among migrant workers, compressing operating margins. Addressing this requires robust attendance-incentive designs, ergonomic workplace improvements, and targeted preventive healthcare programs.

(d) Factors Influencing Salary and Wage Administration

Salary and wage administration involves designing and maintaining an equitable compensation structure, governed by the continuous interplay of external environmental constraints and internal organizational capabilities.

External factors establish the baseline boundaries for remuneration: Statutory mandates, chiefly the Code on Wages, 2019 (in force since 21 November 2025, with a national floor wage below which state minimum wages cannot fall), enforce statutory minimums; prevailing market wage rates, assessed through industry benchmark surveys, dictate external competitiveness to prevent talent poaching; and the cost of living, measured via the Consumer Price Index (CPI), directly governs Dearness Allowance (DA) adjustments to preserve workers' real purchasing power.

Internal factors determine the organization's micro-level pay allocation: Job evaluation findings establish internal wage differentials; the enterprise’s financial performance and liquidity dictate its overall ability to pay; individual worker productivity, merit ratings, and incentive structures align pay with output; and the collective bargaining strength of recognized trade unions influences surplus-sharing agreements. Balancing these dual dimensions ensures regulatory compliance while maintaining organizational solvency.

(e) Causes of Industrial Disputes

Industrial disputes arise from deep-seated friction between labour and management regarding employment conditions, operational control, and statutory rights under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, which replaced the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 when the four labour codes came into force on 21 November 2025.

Economic causes represent the primary trigger, revolving around disputes over basic wage revisions, minimum bonus payouts (now governed by the bonus provisions of the Code on Wages, 2019), allowances, workload intensity, and demands for reduced working hours.

Managerial causes stem from perceived organizational injustice, including autocratic supervision, arbitrary worker transfers, wrongful dismissals, victimization of union representatives, and refusal to acknowledge collective bargaining channels.

Union and political causes generate friction through inter-union rivalries, multiplicity of trade unions competing for sole bargaining status, and the intervention of external political leadership prioritizing partisan agendas over enterprise welfare.

Statutory causes emerge from the non-implementation of tripartite wage board awards, unilateral alterations to certified standing orders, and non-compliance with statutory safety and welfare provisions. Strengthening plant-level grievance redressal mechanisms and institutionalizing joint consultative committees provide the necessary path toward sustaining industrial harmony.