For a job classification, you essentially need three types of documents: a job description for each role, a documented method for weighing and comparing roles, and an overview showing which roles you consider to be work of equal value. The detail that matters most in this context is not the classification itself but its justification: why is role A work of equal value to role B, and on what criteria was that determined. Without that justification, a classification is just a list; with it, it is a document that stands up when questions are raised.
The reason this detail carries so much weight is that the classification must be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. This is not a formal requirement you add afterwards. It determines from the start how you write the job description and which elements you include in it.
The job description as a foundation
Every classification begins with a job description that is substantive, not merely a title. What does the role entail, what responsibilities go with it, what level of independence, what education or experience is assumed, and under what conditions is the work performed. The last point is often overlooked, but physical demands, irregular working hours or work pressure are just as much part of the role as the tasks themselves.
A job description that merely links a job title to a salary scale is not sufficient for this purpose. The description must be independently readable: someone unfamiliar with the role should be able to understand from the text why this role is weighted more heavily, less heavily, or equally to another.
The criteria and the weighting method
The second document is the method: the set of criteria used to compare roles with each other, and the way those criteria are weighted. Common main categories are knowledge and skills, responsibility, effort and working conditions, but the specific application varies by company and sector. What matters is that the criteria are applied in the same way for all roles and that they contain no characteristic that indirectly refers to gender, such as physical strength as a heavily weighted criterion when it is not decisive for the role.
You document this method, even if you have applied it the same way for years. A method that exists only in the minds of a few managers is difficult to reconstruct when a worker or regulator asks about it. A documented method makes the classification repeatable: a new role can be weighted in the same way as existing ones.
The overview of categories of work of equal value
The third document is the result: an overview in which roles are grouped into categories of work of equal value. This overview is the document you refer back to when responding to an information request from an employee, and it forms the basis for reporting by larger employers. It should show which roles fall into which category and, preferably, on what score or weighting that decision was based.
What should not appear in this overview are the salaries themselves. The classification is about the weight and nature of roles, not what is paid in those roles. These two things are recorded and assessed separately; the remuneration policy builds on the classification but is not part of it.
What this is not
A job classification with substantiated criteria says nothing about whether an existing pay difference between two comparable jobs is justified. That is a separate question, answered on a case-by-case basis with knowledge of the concrete situation, usually involving a lawyer or the competent authority. The classification provides the starting point: which jobs are comparable. What happens with that comparison is a next step.
If you prefer to get an overview first without immediately drawing up documents for it, you can read in the knowledge base per topic what is precisely meant by objective and gender-neutral criteria, or in a few questions see which obligations apply to your own situation. How the classification, the criteria and the overview are built up and documented in practice can be found at an explanation of the working method and the sources. For those who want to know what remains free and what is included with a subscription, that overview is at the explanation of what is included.
The free quick scan gives you a first indication in a few questions of where your company stands, without you needing an account for it. If you want to go deeper right away, the knowledge base is open for all topics around pay transparency.