The agency that regulates salaries for state workers released the first ever job evaluation results of 40,298 jobs in 228 public institutions on Friday.
The results from the appraisal indicated that counties have the highest number of job slots for skilled employees at 57 per cent of the evaluated positions.
Salaries and Remuneration Commission said the group falls under Band ‘C’ that categorized supervisors and high level skilled officers.
These included senior principal officers, assistant secretaries and deputy directors, accounting for a total of 11,592 slots out of 20,382 county jobs.
Teachers were the worse off lot in the civil service where 30 per cent (90,000) slots are Job Group 'G' graded under Band ‘B’.
This categorizes officers with low level supervisory skills such as interns, drivers and artisans which accounted for a total of 93 job levels in the teaching service.
SRC also introduced new level of career path where teachers in administration will be absorbed in Band ‘D’.
Band ‘D’ recognizes servants with senior and middle-level management skills such as heads of departments and sectional heads.
The results indicated that majority of positions (1,412) in the 21 ministries were Band 'C' jobs accounting for 46.91 per cent of jobs that require employees with supervisory and high level skills.
Some 795 others (26.41%) fell under Band 'D' which categorized officers with tactical skills in the rank of directors and their deputies, senior principals, commissioners and assistant commissioners.
Band 'B' had 516 job slots, Band 'E' had 269 and only 8 (1%) were under Band 'A'.
"This indicates that either there are very few roles in band A or the roles played by those in that grade have been outsourced," the report said.
It showed a total of 3,010 jobs were evaluated in all ministries.
Majority of jobs (42%) out of 1,881 of those evaluated in 16 of the 18 constitutional commissions were Band ‘C’ followed by Band ‘B’ (30%), Band ‘D’ (21%) and Band ‘E’ at only 7 per cent.
Band ‘E’ jobs categorized officers in strategic positions such as directors and deputy CEOs.
"Thirteen of the 16 institutions in the sector had over 50 per cent of jobs analysed, being from the support functions departments," said the report.
In the 102 evaluated state corporations, 44 per cent of the jobs (3,623) were found to be suitable under Band C – senior managers, assistant directors and deputy directors while 2,592 jobs (31%) under Band ‘B’ were found to be suitable for the position of senior officers, supervisors and principal officers.
Some 1343 jobs (16%) were categorized under Band ‘D’ – senior and middle management specialists- while 102 jobs (1%) fell under Band ‘E’ – directors and deputy CEOs.
Only 689 jobs (8%) were categorized under Band ‘A’ – semi skilled and basic workers such as tea persons and messengers.
The report noted that some state corporations were found to have previously had no standardized grading structures; lacked or had poor quality job descriptions; had overlapping or duplicated roles.
The evaluation of jobs in commercial and strategic corporations that involved 5,723 jobs across 51 institutions found that 1778 jobs (31%) were under Band ‘B’. These include positions such as security officers, HR assistants, clinical officers and lab technologists.
Some 849 jobs (15%) were graded under Band ‘A’ (cooks, drivers, waiters and receptionists) while 2,613 jobs (46%) were under Band ‘C’ (chief accountants, pharmacists, deputy managers and principal engineers).
Seven per cent of jobs (422) were put under Band ‘D’. These includes general managers, commissioners deputy registrars while only 61 jobs (1%) were found suitable under Band ‘E’ (CEOs, managing directors, commission secretaries and commissioner generals.)
Overall, SRC graded 10,982 jobs under Band ‘D’, 9,090 jobs under Band ‘B’, 1514 jobs under Band ‘A’ while 641 jobs were placed under Band ‘E’.
Chairperson Sarah Serem said during the release of the results at KICC on Friday that the findings will address the deep rooted problems that have for a long time been the cause of numerous strikes in the country.
"The impact of such strikes is not only costly to the economy but a big let down to the tax payer who rightly expect quality service delivery," said Serem.
"It will also break the cycle of public servants moving from one government department to the other because of pay," added Serem.
Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua said the new grading system will enable the national and county governments to budget better for salaries for public servants.
"As a government, we expect the commission (SRC) to ensure that the expenditure on government wage bill is affordable and fiscally sustainable," said Kinyua.
He said that the current wage bills of both levels of government exceed ceiling set in Public Finance Management Act 2004.
"This is not good for it makes it difficult to achieve the national goals set under vision 2030," Kinyua said.
He called on all sectors to support the implementation of the new grading and salary structure to help bring down the wage bill.
The evaluation was launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta and kicked off in June 2015.
It sought to attain a harmonized grading structure and eliminate remuneration and benefits disparities in the public service.
Results for the disciplined forces, public universities and research and tertiary education institutions are however yet to be completed.
SRC procured three consultant firms to conduct the exercise.
PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted evaluations in constitutional commissions, Independent offices and teaching service and the county governments.
Ernest and Young tackled the civil service while Deloite and Touche handled the service and regulatory state corporations and commercial and strategic state corporations.