Why job architecture underpins effective position management

What job architecture and position management have in common... and where they differ

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:

Consistency and Equity

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.

Compensation Management

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.

Skill and Competency Alignment

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.

Organisational Agility

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.

Job Documentation

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.