Job Architecture

What is job architecture?

Job architecture provides a company with a framework to understand roles and align jobs based on the type of work performed. It makes for a uniform way of defining roles within a company and then serves as a basis for making strategic decisions.

Why is job architecture important?

• Talent acquisition. A well-defined job architecture framework outlines the company’s value chain. This covers career journeys, qualifications, competencies, and skills. Recruiters have access to these outlines, which allows them to easily and accurately post jobs and recruit the correct candidates based on the required competencies. It also gives potential candidates a clear understanding of what is expected and at what level, leading to long-term retention and job satisfaction. 
• Talent development. Job architecture defines the various levels of a job and documents the skills, qualifications, and competencies required to get there. As a result, clear career paths can be defined horizontally and vertically. This enables employees to clearly understand how to get promoted or move into their desired role. Furthermore, employees can move more easily across departments, as competencies are mapped not in isolation but across the company. It’s the key to unlocking internal mobility. 
• Fair pay. Job architecture plays a huge role in ensuring fair and consistent pay within an organization. Using job architecture, job levels are mapped to functions. In this way, an engineer who works in the IT department earns the same salary as an engineer in the legal department (depending on various factors).

How to set up job architecture 

1. Define the roles in the company

The first step is to classify and define all roles in the company, which comprises a set of roles and responsibilities. The responsibilities can be split up and extend beyond the job function.

2. Create job descriptions

A job description outlines the responsibilities and tasks of an employee. In a Human Resources Information System (HRIS), a job is usually linked to a unique job code.

3. Create job clusters and family groups

A job family is a cluster of similar jobs sharing professional and core tasks. The more similar the characteristics of a job family, the easier it is to cluster them into sub-families. 

4. Conduct a job evaluation

This is where job leveling – systemically and accurately assigning value to individual roles – plays a big role. This value is determined by the knowledge, qualifications, and skills required to do the job. It also takes into account the influence of the role and the outcome of the role. Completing the job evaluation step allows for accurate job title alignment. 

5. Align to benchmarks

Once all job titles and levels within an organization have been confirmed, aligning the individual roles with their respective pay benchmarks becomes easier. This allows for the appropriate salary levels to be set and for correct and fair compensation structures to be put in place. 

6. Finalize job title alignment

It’s important to revisit your organization’s job titles after taking into consideration external benchmarks. The title of an internal role might be different from what it would generally be called in external benchmarks. A title should be market-related and should follow norms and conventions established internally.