In the world of organisational design, two interconnected concepts play critical roles: job architecture and position management. Whilst these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they serve distinct yet complementary purposes in shaping how companies structure their workforce and manage their job data.
Understanding the link between these two approaches is vital for HR professionals and organisational leaders aiming to build efficient, adaptable, and strategically aligned workforces.
If you imagine the construction of a building – the job architecture would be the blueprint that outlines the overall structure. Whereas, position management would involve deciding where to place each brick.
A job architecture forms the backbone of an organisation's workforce structure. It provides a framework for defining and aligning jobs within an organisation based on the type of work performed. In its simplest form, a job architecture provides a mechanism to consolidate job titles into a consistent framework of job functions and job families, giving clarity and transparency on career levels and pay.
A robust job architecture is essential for effective position management. It provides the context and structure around where individual positions can be created, modified, and tracked. Without this overarching framework, position management can become chaotic and inconsistent, leading to inefficiencies and inequities across an organisation.
Position management, building upon the foundation laid by a job architecture, is the tactical, day-to-day process of organising and overseeing specific roles within an organisation. It involves creating, modifying, and tracking individual positions to ensure they align with the company's goals, budget, and operational needs.
The link between job architecture and position management becomes evident in several key areas:
A well-defined job architecture ensures that similar positions across different departments are treated equitably. This consistency is crucial for effective position management, allowing managers to create and modify roles that fit logically within an overall organisational structure.
The reward structures defined in a job architecture should guide position-specific decisions about pay, ensuring internal equity and external competitiveness. This is particularly important given the recent changes in legislation around pay equity and pay transparency.
A job architecture should ideally be linked to comprehensive skill and competency taxonomies or frameworks. These frameworks feed into position management, ensuring that each role is assigned the appropriate skills and competencies.
While a job architecture provides a stable framework, it should also allow for flexibility in position management. When new opportunities arise, organisations can quickly create or modify positions within the existing architecture, ensuring both responsiveness and structural integrity.
There are two key job documents that reflect the differences between job architecture and position management – job profiles and job descriptions. Job profiles are linked to an organisation’s job architecture and provide a broader, more generic overview of a role.
Job profiles focus on core elements common across all variations of a particular role, regardless of specific departments or teams. Job descriptions on the other hand are more specific and detailed documents that outline the requirements and expectations for a single position within the organisation. These are more likely to be used within position management to describe the specific requirements and expectations for a single position within the organisation.
In practice, HR professionals and line managers use position management tools and documents for operational purposes, managing their teams, planning for vacancies, and ensuring they have the right people in the right roles.
However, such day-to-day decisions are guided and supported by the strategic job architecture framework typically developed by internal or external Reward specialists.
For optimal results, organisations should integrate both job architecture and position management into their HR strategy
It can be difficult to know where to start with a job architecture. When faced with a chaotic picture of multiple job titles across various business areas and regions, the response can be to put this task into the “too hard” box and delay it for another year in the hope that it sorts itself out.
This can create issues and open organisations up to compliance risk, especially around pay equity and pay transparency, as well as slow down strategic people initiatives.
This is where having an agile job architecture proves invaluable. The ability to change and adapt at pace, ensures HR and Reward professionals are working more seamlessly together to create a more agile, compliance-focused and future-proofed organisation.
Pay transparency legislation is moving up the equality agenda and gaining traction globally. Ultimately, this legislation is about organisations putting in measures that require them to be open about the compensation they provide, for current and prospective employees.
Pay transparency measures that are covered by legislation include:
Although legislative requirements may differ in each location, fundamentally, what they have one overall aim in common; achieving equal pay for equal work for employees from under-represented groups.
There are global organisations that are ahead of the curve and have been taking pay transparency further than the legislation, such as Buffer who, since 2013, has published all employee salaries online.
According to Census Bureau estimates, in the U.S. women are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. One key measure being used to try and address this disparity is pay transparency.
There are currently 10 U.S. states that have already introduced pay transparency legislation, with many others in the process of doing so.
New York State's bill came into effect in September 2023, and all employers with 4 employees or more are now required to include the compensation, or a range of compensation, when advertising for a job, promotion or transfer.
California's Equal Pay Act has been in place since 2016 and prevents employers from asking about candidates' previous salaries. The state introduced additional legislation in 2023 that requires all employers with at least 15 workers to include the hourly rate or salary range on all job postings.
Over 1 in 4 U.S. employees are now covered by pay transparency legislation with that number due to rapidly increase over the next few years.
E.U. Pay Transparency Directive
With the E.U. gender pay gap at around 13%, the EU Pay Transparency Directive was approved in June 2023 to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work, or work of equal value, between men and women through pay transparency and enforcement mechanisms.
The directive provides:
E.U. member states must transpose the Directive into national law by June 2026.
Although legislative requirements may differ, fundamentally, what they have in common is one overall aim; achieving equal pay for equal work for employees from under-represented groups.
The situation around pay transparency in the U.K. is less certain than the U.S. or the EU.
In the UK, companies with more than 250 employees are already obliged to disclose pay information under the Equality Act 2010 and report annually on their gender pay gap, i.e. the difference between the average (mean or median) earnings of men and women across a workforce.
In March 2022, a pilot scheme was launched by the UK government to tackle pay transparency. Those taking part in the pilot listed salary details on job adverts and purposefully didn’t ask about salary history during recruitment.
On 17 May 2024, it was confirmed that work on the UK pay transparency pilot scheme had been paused pending further research, and to analyse the impact of pay transparency around the world.
Therefore, whilst the UK does have established gender pay reporting, it is currently lagging behind much of the world in terms of pay transparency legislation.
However, an increased global focus on increased pay transparency, combined with a new Labour government committed to closing “gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps”, makes it more likely that implementing legislation in the UK around pay transparency will move up the agenda.
UK organisations will need to consider their approach if they operate in territories that already have pay transparency legislation. There is also nothing stopping organisations from going above and beyond the current legislative position in the U.K. to prepare for any future changes.
Pay transparency is popular with employees and those seeking new roles. Given the current war for talent, companies should take notice of findings showing that 60% of U.S.employees and 57% of U.K. employees would switch companies to one with more pay transparency. However, research looking at the wage data relating to 100,000 academics in the U.S. over two decades, found that increased pay transparency can result in a 20% reduction in the pay difference between individuals.
Harvard Business Review recently shared some interesting research on the often, unintended impacts that a pay transparency policy can have in an organisation:
These additional, non-monetary benefits have been termed "idiosyncratic deals" or "i-deals" and the research further found that these i-deals were more likely to be agreed by supervisors as a way of retaining key talent. So, base pay may be fairer but inequality may still exist in the additional rewards that some employees are able to negotiate for themselves.
Another fear that organisations might have is that by publicising their salaries, competitors could poach key talent with higher offers. This is something that Buffer feared but say they haven’t experienced so far.
At the very core of pay transparency, and pay equity, is the ability to look across the organisation at the landscape of jobs, pay and reward, and make comparisons between the compensation for similar roles and dive deep into roles to ensure equal pay for equal work.
For many companies this landscape is still a very chaotic, with individual teams and departments having their own job structures, titles and pay scales with little governance in place to manage and align.
To prepare for pay transparency an essential first step is to put in place a comprehensive skills-based job architecture with roles organised into job families.
Organisations need the ability to fully analyse their job architecture and pay structures in order to have confidence in their pay equity position. The underlying structures, job evaluation processes and levelling frameworks must all be in place to support pay decisions.
Innovative organisations are investing in technologies that create automate simple, flexible, future-proofed job architectures that help govern job creation and pay bandings, manage scope creep and provide instant access to job and pay inequalities.
Organisations are increasingly looking to adopt a skills-based approach to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving business landscape, which focuses on identifying, developing, and utilising specific skills across the organisation to improve performance and adaptability.
This shift is driven by the need to address the dynamic nature of work. Jobs are constantly evolving, as are market demands and customer expectations. As a result, identifying the specific skills required for each job, while ensuring information is governed and kept up-to-date, is critical.
A skills-based focus on jobs and work allows organisations to move employees around to where their skills are most needed. It also enables the development of targeted skills training programmes. Lastly, it helps identify and proactively address any gaps that may hold an organisation back through the use of a skills-based hiring approach. This is essential for developing the organisational agility that is now required.
Research by Deloitte underlines the clear benefits of the shift to skills, both in terms of better business results and an improved employee experience. Organisations that had embedded a skills-based approach were found to be:
A chaotic job architecture, where roles haven’t been organised into job families, can significantly hinder the transition to skills.
From our experience working, the main barrier to change for many organisations is a chaotic job architecture and an absence of skills-based job families
A job architecture forms the building blocks of an organisation. It provides a framework for defining and aligning jobs within an organisation. A skills-based job architecture is based on the skills required for each role, rather than traditional job titles or hierarchies.
The key components and characteristics of a skills-based job architecture are:
By grouping jobs into job families, you can more easily identify skills across the organisation. It also helps systematically identify and categorise requirements. In truth, without a skills-based job architecture, making the shift to skills will be an uphill battle.
One of the biggest challenges in moving to a skills-based approach is identifying and consolidating the skills required
A skills-based architecture provides a structured framework to consolidate, capture, and manage skills. When linked to a consistent skills framework or taxonomy, you can better understand the skills landscape across the entire organisation.
Aligning your jobs into a skills-based job architecture also provides a framework for workforce planning and enabling organisational agility. If, for example, you are looking to see where skills may exist in the organisation to support strategic initiatives or if you want to look at deploying skills from a reorganisation, your skills-based architecture allows you to see where these skills are so you can more rapidly deploy and relocate employees.
In truth, without a skills-based job architecture, moving to a skills-based approach will be an uphill battle
There is a growing trend among organisations to adopt a skills-based approach to stay competitive. A skills-based approach enables organisations to deploy employees based on their skills, develop targeted training programmes and address skills gaps proactively.
A major barrier to this transition is a chaotic job structure, implementing a skills-based job architecture and a job family framework will be a critical first step towards controlling the chaos and moving to a skills-based approach.
Centralising job data is critical for effective governance and robust risk management in local government. Without a unified approach, organisations encounter challenges such as inconsistent job descriptions, difficulties when assessing pay equity, and the risks associated with outdated or inaccurate job information.
Research has highlighted that increased data visibility is often cited as one of the main ways the public sector can become more efficient. Centralising data means establishing a cohesive, comprehensive, and readily accessible repository of job content, which is vital for ensuring compliance, fairness, and improving operational efficiency.
We explore the current challenges organisations face and highlight the advantages of centralising job data.
There are some common issues around job data and job content that we encounter when starting to work with public sector organisations:
Time wasted finding job content
We find that, across most local authorities, job descriptions are stored in a wide variety of locations. There may be some held centrally but there will be others on individual desktops or in team files. There is no central place where job content is stored that is easily accessible by whoever needs it.
This leads to time wasted trying to find job content and often a duplication of effort; a typical example is a manager recreating a job description because an already-created version can't be found. This lack of centralisation also makes governance and locating job content for pay equity analysis extremely challenging and time-consuming.
Inconsistent formats
A common challenge for local government is that there isn’t a consistent format for job descriptions. Often the template has changed over time and there are wide variations – some ranging from 24 pages long, others two pages long. This results in inconsistent job content. Different formats for job content hinder the ability to perform cross-departmental analyses, for example when assessing pay equity for similar job roles that sit in different teams.
Job content not being regularly updated
Job descriptions need to be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure they reflect current roles and responsibilities, especially for use as pay equity comparators. This task is often difficult to manage without a central repository where all job content is stored and easily accessible. Job content will only be updated when a vacancy arises and, therefore, may not accurately reflect the job being done on the ground.
Lack of audit trails
Without a centralised mechanism to capture changes to job descriptions, tracking the evolution of roles becomes challenging. When job description reviews and approvals are conducted manually via email, there will be no clear record of changes made, who approved them, or when they were implemented. A lack of accurate record keeping is often cited as a key issue in pay equity cases.
Different formats for job content hinder the ability to perform cross-departmental analyses. For example, assessing pay equity for similar job roles sitting in different teams.
Outdated versions of job content being used
In the absence of a centralised repository, it can be unclear which version of a job description is the latest. This ambiguity can leave an organisation exposed to potential risks, such as claims that outdated or inaccurate job descriptions were used for job evaluation. Centralising job data helps ensures that there is always a single, up-to-date version of each job description or role profile available, resulting in good governance.
The way to mitigate these risks is to bring all your disparate job content together in one centralised location and then implement a process around how job content is updated and managed going forward.
This will help ensure that job content is up-to-date, accessible, consistent and fit-for-purpose for the reporting that is required for all local authorities.
Key elements to consider for any new process are:
Centralising job data is crucial for risk management and good governance. It ensures consistent and accurate job content, facilitates equal pay analyses, maintains an audit trail of changes and provides clarity on the latest versions of job content.
By addressing these critical aspects, local authorities can reduce the risks associated with decentralised job content management and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. Investing in a centralised job data system is not just a matter of efficiency, it is a strategic imperative for sustainable organisational success in the public sector.
To learn more about controlling the job data chaos, why not join one of our webinars.
Many organisations are making fundamental shifts in the way they hire and retain employees, namely a more focused approach to shifting to skills. This is having a knock-on effect on a range of areas across the business, including job family frameworks. Mercer’s 2024 Global Talent Trends Report states that 51% of organisations are focusing on employee up/re-skilling, which is driven by a need to increase productivity, retention and employee wellbeing.
As part of this drive, 37% of organisations in Mercer’s survey felt that a simplified organisational structure was also a priority, which is where the challenge ultimately lies. By their very nature, large organisations have complex frameworks that are proving a real challenge in the shift to skills or to simplify job structures, architecture or job family frameworks.
The Burning Glass Institute’s report on skills-based hiring highlighted that focusing on skills was a positive step in theory, but, in practice, something quite different. For those organisations that dropped requirements from jobs, 18% fell back to hiring patterns after an initial burst of progress.
Becoming a skills-based organisation needs more than intent, it needs structure and planning.
As Burning Glass states, "Without rethinking underlying systems and practices, changes don’t stick."
Mapping out clear career paths is one key element to retaining employees, it ensures people can more easily identify potential next steps up and around the organisation. Employees who are clear about the opportunities that are available to them are more likely to stay with your organisation rather than explore opportunities elsewhere.
From the work we have done helping organisations define career paths, we’ve found that a critical first step is to establish a comprehensive job family framework. Having this in place will help map out career paths for employees more clearly and in a way that is simple and accessible.
A job family is a group of related jobs within an organisation that share similar skill sets and nature of work. The essential nature of the activities, and the basic skills used, will be similar for all roles within a job family. Although, the level of responsibility the skills required to do the work, and the scope of the role, may be different.
The job titles for each role within a job family should be chosen to reflect these differences in scope and responsibility, whilst still utilising a common job titling language to make clear which job family a job sits within.
Job families are often grouped within “job family groups” or “job functions” – these are higher-level categories of jobs, which will include multiple job families. Examples of job functions would be Finance or General Administration.
The overall structure of job families in an organisation makes up a job family framework.
Introducing job families can help consolidate, review, cleanse and streamline your job data and job content. Once a job family framework is in place, it provides a solid foundation for many key organisational processes including establishing career paths.
A job family framework helps simplify career paths within a job family
One of the primary advantages of implementing a job family framework is to simplify career path mapping for employees. A well-designed job family will have responsibilities and requirements for each role outlined in a role profile. Employees will be able to easily see how the responsibilities and requirements for other roles in their job family differ from those of the role that they are currently in. They can use this information to plan their own development and work towards the skills requirements for any roles they are aiming for.
A job family framework helps simplify career paths across different job families
A job family framework should be underpinned by a consistent levelling structure. If this is the case, then potential career paths can be mapped out laterally and vertically across job families - where similar skillsets make lateral moves a possibility.
Instead of navigating a large organisational-wide web of different job titles and responsibilities, employees can use a job family framework to understand potential career paths involving other job families. Mapping out these potential lateral moves can help employees take control of their own career development.
Aside from mapping career paths, job families have many other benefits including:
Find out more about job families by signing up for one of our webinars.
With legislation on the rise across many countries, now is the time for organisations to get on the front foot when it comes to pay transparency, but when faced with the challenge of dealing with complex organisational structures, it can be a daunting task.
There are a lot of moving parts for any large organisation when it comes to compliance. It's not just about keeping up with legislative changes but also putting in place robust and agile job data structures, mechanisms and processes to enable effective global compliance, whilst managing the nuances of regional variations.
“The pay transparency movement will continue to spread through regulation, but also through changing workforce expectations. We’re in an environment where employees are rightly demanding fairness, clarity and transparency in how they are paid.” Aon
There are now 10 US states with pay transparency legislation in place, with a further thirteen in the process of making it law.
Using the state of California as an example, all employers, with 15 or more employees, must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting. They must also maintain records of a job title and wage rate history for each employee for the duration of employment plus three years.
26% of the US labour force is covered by pay transparency laws, that's over 44 million people
In addition, there are requirements for pay gap reporting, a ban on asking job applicants about their salary histories and relying on an applicant's salary history to determine compensation levels.
In 2023, the EU Parliament voted to adopt a Directive. This is in a drive to close the gender pay gap of around 13%. EU Member States have until June 2026 to transpose the Directive into national law.
The Directive also makes pay gap reporting mandatory for organisations over a certain size; it also goes one step further, requiring organisations to look at deeper analysis and establish a corrective action plan where there is a pay gap of more than 5%.
Job applicants will have the right to receive information on the initial pay level/range for any advertised position and employers cannot ask about previous or current pay.
The EU Directive won’t directly apply in the UK. However, if a company is registered in the UK, or anywhere else non-EU, but has more than 100 employees based in EU member states, they will need to comply with the legislation and reporting requirements for that location.
The UK also has its own gender pay gap reporting process for organisations with more than 250 employees.
At the very core of pay transparency, and pay fairness, is job data. Having the job data for your whole organisation mapped within a well-structured job architecture, with a consistent levelling framework across job families, will give you the ability to look across your landscape of jobs, pay and reward, in order to make comparisons between similar roles and ensure equal pay for equal work.
However, for some companies job data can be chaotic, inconsistent and unstructured. It can exist as a long list of job titles and associated job codes that have developed organically as the organisation has grown, changed, merged or acquired. Where an organisation does have a job structure in place, it can easily become difficult to govern and manage and therefore out-of-date.
In both scenarios, there can be a state of chaos – hundreds of job titles, many just slight variations of others; job levels all over the place; and inconsistencies in salary ranges across roles, business areas and regions. A disordered job structure creates a shaky foundation, which makes compliance with pay transparency legislation difficult.
From a Job data perspective, it’s never been more important to get your house in order. Regaining control through a dynamic Job Architecture, and structured frameworks through Job Families, will give greater transparency and control over pay and grading.
Although legislative requirements may differ in each location, fundamentally, they have one overall aim in common; achieving equal pay for equal work for employees from under-represented groups.
Chaotic job structures can act as a barrier to pay and reward, making it difficult to establish clear criteria for compensation, which, in turn, leads to inconsistencies, inequities, and confusion among employees.
This is a time when pay transparency is increasingly becoming a legislative or mandatory requirement, both in Europe and the US: 10 states and counting have now made it law. In the UK, we’re seeing the public sector being hit by pay equity fines, which are largely due to a lack of visibility of job structures.
The challenge is that for many organisations job data and job content is chaotic, inconsistent and unstructured with little to no governance or overall management. Many organisations are simply managing a long list of job titles that have been added to organically as the organisation has grown, changed, merged, or gone through acquisition.
It is therefore unsurprising that so many organisations, both public and private are struggling to get their house in order and make job and pay structures more transparent and visible across the enterprise.
One way to reduce this chaos is to organise your jobs into a job family framework. This is where jobs in an organisation, sharing similar skillsets, nature of work and career paths, are grouped in job families.
The essential nature of the activities and the basic skills used will be similar for all roles within a job family. However, the level of responsibility, the skills required to do the work and the scope of the role may be different.
Job families help simplify pay structures by creating a more organised and streamlined approach to pay and reward. A job family framework will reduce the number of distinct reward structures, making it easier to manage and communicate pay information.
Job families also simplify the process of determining appropriate pay ranges for different roles, as organisations can use market data and industry benchmarks specific to each job family.
With job families, high-level roles within each category are evaluated, which minimises the need to evaluate individual jobs across locations or teams. Categorising tasks broadens flexibility; as roles evolve, new tasks typically align within existing categories, avoiding frequent job evaluations.
Standardising job titles within job families also aids market benchmarking. Salary comparisons occur at the job family level, rather than assessing each unique role individually. This approach enables organisations to maintain competitive pay while simplifying structures and adhering to governance standards.
2. Pay Transparency
A job family structure enhances communication and transparency around pay and reward and aligns with global movements towards pay transparency.
Increasingly favoured by employees and job seekers - 60% of US and 57% of UK employees would be more willing to switch to organisations with greater pay transparency - job families provide individuals with a clearer understanding of how their role fits within the organisational framework.
Well-defined job families also enable data-driven compensation decisions, including setting salary ranges and adapting to market trends. Moreover, such structures promote accountability in pay decisions, facilitating explanations and justifications to candidates and employees.
3. Pay Equity
Finally, simplifying pay structures through job families can help with evaluations of pay equity. A job family structure makes it easier to look across job families, particularly if these are linked by a common grading / levelling structure, to understand any pay equity issues between different roles.
Where roles are grouped into job families based on skills and responsibilities, overlaps and inefficiencies are avoided and therefore it is much easier to see if employees are being paid differently, even though their experience and skills are the same.
We go into greater depth around job family frameworks and outline all potential benefits in our Guide to Job Families.
RoleMapper, the AI-powered job management platform, has secured £2.1million funding that will support job creation and overall growth of the business. The funding round includes £1million equity investment from the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund (SWIF), via appointed fund manager, The FSE Group. Mercia Ventures, South West-based venture capital firm QantX, and existing private investors.
The £200m South West Investment Fund covers the entire South West region and provides loans from £25k to £2m and equity investment up to £5m to help a range of small and medium sized businesses to start up, scale up or stay ahead. The RoleMapper deal is the fund’s largest investment to date since its launch in July last year.
RoleMapper’s technology is disrupting how organisations manage jobs, skills, inclusivity and compliance. It can automate and transform how to plan and manage job designs and descriptions, with access to millions of jobs and skills across multiple industries, all integrated within existing human resources (HR) systems.
Sara Hill, RoleMapper Founder and CEO said: “We are thrilled to have the South West Investment Fund and FSE on board as new partners, enabling us to further strengthen our product, unique AI models and build capacity for further roll-out. We look forward to working with all our investors as we continue our growth journey and build on the progress we’ve made helping organisations create better jobs and build inclusive workplaces.”
The Exeter based business is already working with a number of large organisations including well-known global brands, local authorities and NHS trusts.
Ralph Singleton, Head of Equity, South West at The FSE Group added: “RoleMapper has a strong leadership team with experience building and scaling businesses in the B2B and HR space. They have recently pivoted their offering to address an identified market need and their AI powered tech is helping major corporates and public sector organisations manage their responsibilities as equal opportunity employers. We look forward to working with them as they expand.”
Jody Tableporter, Director, Nations and Regions Investment Funds said: “Rolemapper has gone from start-up to scale-up in just a few years, harnessing AI technology to transform how businesses and organisations manage their workforce strategy. We’re delighted the South West Investment Fund is supporting their further growth, with what is the fund’s largest deal to date.”
Mercia Ventures first backed RoleMapper in 2022. Rafael Joseph of Mercia added: “We’re pleased to continue to back the team at RoleMapper. They have shown great tenacity against a tough economic backdrop and successfully reshaped their strategy to solve the immediate issues facing clients. As a consequence, they’ve continued to win impressive blue-chip customers, proving the need for their solutions in the market. We expect them to have another strong year in 2024.”
The purpose of the South West Investment Fund is to drive sustainable economic growth by supporting innovation and creating local opportunity for new and growing businesses across the South West. The South West Investment Fund is increasing the supply and diversity of early-stage finance for South West smaller businesses, providing funds to firms that might otherwise not receive investment and helping to break down barriers in access to finance.
Job families and job functions can help organisations establish a robust framework, ensuring transparent career paths or a more effective shift to a skills-based approach. They can be particularly useful when there is a lot of variation in job titles between different functions.
Essentially, a job family is a group of related jobs within an organisation that share similar skill sets and nature of work. Although the level of responsibility, the skills required to do the work and the scope of the role may differ, the essential nature of the activities and the basic skills used will be similar for all roles within a job family.
They are not to be confused with ‘Job family groups’ or ‘job functions’ which are higher-level categories that include multiple job families; Finance or General Administration are good examples of a job function.
We talk to a lot of organisations that are really struggling with their job data and job content that is chaotic, inconsistent and unstructured with no governance or overall management.
As a result of this lack of structure, many organisations exist as a long list of job titles that have been added organically as the organisation has grown, changed, merged or acquired. If an organisation does have a job structure in place, it is often the case that a streamlined structure was implemented but, over time, has been difficult to govern and manage.
In both scenarios, there is often a resulting state of chaos:
Introducing a job family structure can help consolidate, review, cleanse and streamline your job data and job content
Once a job family framework is in place, it provides a solid foundation for many key organisational processes, such as:
There are a range of ways an organisation can create a job family, which includes:
To get a better idea of the job families and structures, we've created a range of examples around key functions.
Our latest guide goes into more detail on creating job families, as well as outlining why it’s a critical element when making that shift to becoming a skills-based organisation.
For many organisations, job data and job content is chaotic, inconsistent and unstructured with no governance or overall management.
Many organisations exist as a long list of job titles that have been added to organically as the organisation has grown, changed, merged or acquired. If an organisation does have a job structure in place, it is often the case that a streamlined structure was implemented but, over time, this has been difficult to govern and manage.
Introducing a job family structure can help consolidate, review, cleanse and streamline your job data and job content. Once a job family framework is in place, it provides a solid foundation for many key organisational processes.
Josh Bersin refers to job families as “Guilds” or “Professional Groups” as roles are grouped on similar skills requirements. He recommends that each job family is owned by a capability leader, who is then responsible for keeping track of the skills and technologies that people in the group need, as well as making sure they are also aware of wider career options that utilise their skills.
RoleMapper's Guide to Job Families focuses on the importance of implementing a Job Family framework and its key benefits, which includes:
We've also created a bank of Job Family examples to help bring a Job Family framework to life.
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