Job architecture provides organizations a structured understanding of job roles and responsibilities rises in importance. Even in smaller organizations, increasing employee transparency along with a need to establish workplace equity may give rise to the need for organizational clarity that stretches across the organizational chart.

That’s where job architecture comes in. The concept describes the hierarchy of jobs and roles within the organization, cataloging responsibilities in a comprehensive framework.

Engaging in a job architecture framework means clearly defining the levels of jobs within your organization, then using that framework to ensure the right distribution of roles and responsibilities across it. Building an accurate job architecture can support alignment with strategic goals and talent management, ensuring that the right roles are in place and the right talent occupies these roles. A clear and unbiased definition of roles can also help to create a more equitable and consistent compensation strategy across individual units.

Getting there, of course, requires a strategic approach. The right stakeholders need to be involved and in clear alignment on the objectives of the project. From there, the job architecture can be completed in eight stages, with several potential challenges to be overcome for success.

The Key Objectives of a Job Architecture Project

While the exact nature of a job architecture project differs depending on organizational type, success will almost necessarily require three key objectives to be completed:

1. Standardization. The project should lead toward an ability to standardize job titles as well as leveling across the organization, ensuring that roles with similar responsibilities are classified in similar ways.
2. Career Path Progression. With a job architecture in place, employees should be able to follow clear career paths and receive relevant development opportunities based on their current roles and similarities.
3. Equitable Compensation. A successful job architecture is able to align compensation with job roles across the organization as well as with industry benchmarks, removing bias and creating compensation equity.

Keeping these objectives in mind will help to keep everyone involved on the same page and avoid scope creep. Throughout the project, they can also act as benchmarks to measure progress toward the ultimate desired outcomes of the job architecture to be created.

Core Stakeholders and Their Roles

A job architecture project can never be the responsibility of a single unit or staff member. Instead, a wide range of stakeholders should be involved to ensure the project’s success.

Human Resources: In most cases, the HR team will facilitate the project due to its inherent knowledge of organizational charts, job titles, and descriptions. Leading the job architecture project will also ensure alignment with existing and future HR strategy to manage resources across the organization.

Compensation: Whether or not they are located within the HR team, compensation professionals can provide a unique perspective during the project. They can provide market data on typical compensation for individual jobs and roles, while also being able to build leveling frameworks that match the architecture’s structure.

Department Heads: As leaders of their individual organizational units, department heads can provide input that ensures relevance for the specific needs of their units. Including the heads of marketing and sales, for example, can ensure that similar roles in each unit are still considered for the unique nature of their overall departmental functions. 

Employees and Managers: “Boots on the ground” are able to represent ideal descriptions for their roles better than anyone in the organization. Their feedback early in the process can help to ensure that the framework will work practically and be accurate to the needs and capabilities of the business.

Finally, keeping organizational leadership in the loop on the project can also result in practical benefits. It ensures buy-in of the finished framework at the highest levels, increasing the chances of a successful implementation.

The 8 Stages of a Job Architecture Project

With the right stakeholders and objectives in place, the actual project can begin.

1. Planning and Scope Definition

Based on the general objectives outlined above, set clear objectives for what the job architecture needs to accomplish for your organization. Based on these objectives, define key deliverables, such as an implementation plan or a plan to move from current to desired compensation structures.

This step should also include the creation of a timeline that keeps everyone on task about deadlines and deliverables. Finally, it helps to clearly outline the scope of the project, including areas (such as large-scale organizational changes) that may be out of scope and need to be addressed in a future project.

2. Job Analysis and Data Collection

Clearly defined objectives and scope will inform the type of information that needs to be gathered for analysis. Data will likely include the titles and descriptions of existing roles, functions, and structures, including job descriptions, market data, and job levels. An initial analysis can also unearth duplicative or erroneous jobs, as well as potential gaps in the current framework that the project will need to address.

3. Categorize Job Families and Career Levels

Reviewing each job individually allows for a better understanding of how they break down across your organization. Similar jobs across the organization, even in different departments, may fall into the same job families or sub families, or the same career streams and levels. Create a definition around what type of job will be found in each family and subfamily to help with the categorization.

Breaking down your jobs by career level can be difficult. Start by determining how to break down your levels, such as Associate vs. Intermedia Professional, P1/P2, etc. Add parameters that help you differentiate your career levels based on variables such as job scope, responsibility, level of autonomy, experience, and education. Taking this step early can help to make the below steps more objective and consistent.

4. Market Value Analysis

Next comes a comprehensive analysis of what each job is worth in the market. Tools like Squirrel can help you understand the market worth of individual jobs, allowing you to analyze where your roles may fall above and below these benchmarks. This can become a crucial piece for communication as well; according to the Society for Human Resource Management, pay transparency can reduce employee intent to quit by 30%.

5. Internal Value Analysis

In addition to external factors that play into compensation, your internal values also need to play into the equation. Compare individual jobs to other, similar roles in the organization. How do jobs in the same job family or subfamily align? Where can you find inequities that a new, more structured job architecture will be able to address?

6. Stakeholder Review and Adjustments

The full job and compensation analysis relies on objective sources but is not necessarily comprehensive. What follows should be leadership and departmental feedback on the roles, responsibilities, and compensation for each role. That feedback allows for potential adjustments that can account for organizational nuances that the initial analysis might not cover.

7. Employee Evaluation

A job architecture done right will likely identify several gaps between current roles and necessary jobs and roles for optimum operation. Use this stage of the process to identify new roles for employees, as well as potential new jobs or jobs that can be deleted due to redundancies across the organizations. These adjustments should be clearly marked as necessary improvements for an architecture that best serves the organization.

8. Implementation and Rollout

Finally, the development of the final architecture has to be followed by a thoughtful, strategic implementation. The entire project and structure should be clear not only to those directly affected but also to employees across the organizational chart. Consider including interactive sessions where employees don’t just see the information but have the opportunity to ask questions and receive clarifications as needed. 

The Work Required for a Successful Project

Within these eight stages, a number of activities are necessary. Ensuring that they are complete as the job architecture project moves along can help to ensure a successful outcome for the organization.

First, data analysis is a core requirement. Reviewing current roles, job descriptions, and compensation data can deliver the foundational information and insights to build the architecture. In addition, evaluating each job’s relative value based on its responsibilities and requirements can help to establish more objectivity in both roles and compensation.

Market benchmarking becomes another core activity. Compare individual identified roles with industry data to ensure competitive alignment and equity. Finally, documenting the roles and levels can create an architecture that is easy to share across the organization, helping to ensure successful employee communication.

Creating a Project Timeline for Job Architecture

No job architecture project can be successful without the necessary time invested in it. Naturally, more complex organizations will require extended timelines, sometimes up to 12 months, to consider all variables and data. Small organizations with only a few roles, on the other hand, may only need one to two months for the same project.

The key to success, then, is building a timeline that makes sense for your organization. Pace out the project to ensure that each of the stages above gets enough time for both data collection and analysis. Some steps, like competitive benchmarking, may be quick with the right tools. Others, like evaluating and comparing each job description, may take more time.

One way to simplify the process is to create a more detailed timeline with specific milestones to reach. For example, each of the stages above may have a short period of stakeholder reviews to prevent scope creep and ensure both accuracy and buy-in. Create the timeline first, then adjust over time if individual stages are more complex or require more attention than initially anticipated.

3 Common Challenges of Job Architecture Project

It’s not always simple or straightforward. Navigating a successful project means having to overcome these three common challenges organizations tend to encounter in the process:

1. Stakeholder alignment. Getting everyone on the same page is difficult. Different stakeholders in the project and in the organization as a whole may feel differently about the way that jobs and roles are distributed and prioritized. 
2. Role changes. The outcome of any job architecture project will upset the status quo. Employees naturally resist change, so changes to job titles or levels can lead to dissatisfaction that may be difficult to overcome.
3. Scope creep. It’s not uncommon for these types of projects to unearth more significant challenges than simple changes in jobs or compensation. However, implementing these changes can become difficult or encounter even more resistance across organizational levels.

Best Practices to Overcome Common Job Architecture Challenges

Challenges like the above are common, but they’re far from impossible to overcome. In fact, a few best practices can help to ensure that your project team is prepared for all eventualities and will work toward a successful job architecture.

1. Secure executive buy-in. Keeping organizational leadership in the loop and involved will create buy-in throughout the process that will become essential when it comes to making changes to your organizational chart, compensation, and other variables.
2. Ensure transparency. Beyond organizational leadership, transparency for the entire organization can make employees and managers alike more amenable to change. The Harvard Business Review found that when employees feel ownership in the implementation, their willingness to embrace change improves significantly.
3. Create follow-up projects as needed. To avoid scope creep, identify any changes that require more significant organizational change immediately. These changes may require more consideration and stakeholder involvement, along with their own implementation process to ensure success.

A well-structured job architecture can make a massive difference in helping your organization build efficiencies as well as equitable compensation structures that make sense across the organization. But you have to get it right. Following these best practices, within an intentional approach following the above eight stages through the right stakeholders, can help to get there. It’s how you can make sure that the project will succeed long-term and the implementation will be successful for your organization.

FAQs

Question: What is another word for job architecture?

Answer: Phrases that may be used to describe a job architecture include: Job Catalogue, Job Leveling, Job Standardization, Career Framework, Career Planning, etc…

Question: What is the difference between job architecture and organizational design?

Answer: Job architecture is like creating a map of all the different jobs in a company. It shows what each person does in their role, how much they get paid, and how they can grow in their career.

Organization structure is different – it’s more like a family tree for the company. It shows which teams work together, who reports to whom, and how different departments connect. For example, it might show that the marketing team and sales team both report to the head of sales and marketing.

A simple way to remember the difference: Job architecture is about the jobs themselves (what people do and how they progress in their careers), while organization structure is about how teams and departments are arranged (who works with whom and who’s in charge of what).

Question: What is job architecture in the world at work?

Answer: According to World at Work, job architecture refers to the infrastructure or hierarchy of jobs within an organization.

Question: What are job architecture examples?

Answer: Job architecture examples would include all of the roles in a software engineer’s career track, from entry level to VP of engineering. Another example may be for a Compensation Professional to move from entry level to the head of HR.