Job Architecture is still key to Org Design in a skills-based world
Does your organization struggle with defining clear roles and career paths? You’re not alone. Many HR departments, even in large companies, lack a well-defined job architecture. This gap creates challenges when it comes to implementing organization design changes, as well as managing employee career progression and compensation decisions.
At its core, job architecture is a framework that groups roles into job families, defines levels, and aligns compensation. Historically, it has been used for career planning, ensuring consistency in job titles, and determining where new roles fit within the organization. Yet, as the focus on skills-based design grows, some may question whether traditional job architecture is still relevant in today’s fast-paced and agile work environments.
Skills Matter—But They Aren’t the Whole Picture
The rise of skills-based organization design emphasizes individual skills over traditional roles. In a world where multidisciplinary teams and agility are key, knowing which skills individuals bring to the table is crucial for success. However, this shift brings its own set of challenges.
Skills alone don’t provide a complete picture. They vary in maturity and application, and without some form of structure, it becomes difficult to determine the right levels of competence and how to reward those skills. How will you ensure that compensation is fair? How will you measure an individual’s growth or career path based solely on their skills?
Why Job Architecture Still Matters—Even in Agile Teams
While the nature of work has evolved, the need for structure hasn’t disappeared. Even in agile environments, clear accountability and performance metrics are required. Here’s why job architecture remains essential, even as we focus more on skills:
Objectivity in Decision-Making: When it’s time for reorganization or workforce planning, job architecture provides a consistent framework for matching people to roles based on more than just gut feeling. It allows you to objectively assess capabilities, experience, and responsibilities.
Compensation and Career Paths: Employees need clear roadmaps for growth, even if their career progression isn’t always linear. Job architecture creates transparency in compensation systems, tying them not just to skills but also to levels of accountability and contribution.
Flexibility with Structure: Agility is crucial, but without a foundation of job architecture, it’s hard to determine how new skills fit within the broader organization. A solid structure allows you to integrate new roles, map existing skills, and ensure smooth transitions during reorganizations.
Getting Started with Job Architecture
Building a job architecture from scratch can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Start small—focus on one function, such as finance, where roles tend to be clearly defined. Create simple job families, harmonize titles, and layer in skills and capabilities. Once you’ve tested and refined this in one area, you can expand it across the organization.
The benefits are clear: job architecture streamlines decision-making, simplifies reorganizations, and ensures that your workforce is structured to deliver on your strategic goals—even in a skills-driven world.
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