Know your worth: re-banding the nursing workforce
Guidance for nursing staff and managers
The Westminster government has promised one of the most significant investments in nursing, but promises don't deliver themselves.
With your support, we can make sure this investment becomes a reality.
For years, we've called for new, accurate job profiles that properly recognise your knowledge, skills and responsibility. Thanks to our campaigning, we now have new profiles that more accurately reflect modern nursing.
NHS jobs are matched to these profiles to determine your pay band, affecting how much you get paid. This means that every nursing role in the NHS needs to be evaluated and reviewed.
The Westminster government has also committed to reviewing every band 5 NHS nursing role in England. This is a huge step to nursing staff in the NHS being paid and valued for the work they’re doing.
If you work in the NHS, it’s now more important than ever to complete a job evaluation to make sure you're being paid fairly for the job you do. This is your best chance of a pay rise.
If you work in independent health and social care settings, check whether your employer has its own job evaluation system in place.
Wondering whether it works?
Meet this group of district nurses who took on Scotland's biggest health board, with our support, and won.
Get started
One of the most useful actions you can take is to start annotating your job description over a couple of weeks or months.
Print it out, grab a pen and start recording where your day-to-day responsibilities stretch beyond your job description. It's the easiest way to start building evidence for your job evaluation.
What you need for a job evaluation
Role profile
National profiles outline the common and expected features of a nursing role. Thanks to our campaigning, you have updated profiles that more accurately reflect modern nursing.
Understand the profiles
Our step guides
We've created step-by-step guides to help use the profiles. Work through 16 specific factors and identify what gaps there are in your job description to match it to a new profile.
Explore our step guides
Matched job report
These reports are how employers match nursing roles to national band criteria. Request yours to understand how they made that decision, and why re-evaluation matters.
Learn more
RCN guidance
- Read: How to make your job description work for you
- Read: Having a meaningful conversation with your manager
- Read: Advice for managers
- Read: RCN position on use of generic job descriptions
- Read: RCN position on nursing being a band 6 profession
- Read: RCN position on the use of AI in NHS job evaluation
Join a job evaluation event
Make sure you're being paid fairly for the job you do.
Join one of our upcoming events to learn about the process and how we can support you.
Interested in becoming a job evaluation rep?
Support your colleagues to win the value and recognition they deserve with our new rep role.
