What is Job Architecture, Anyway?

In recent years there has been a huge wave of interest in “Job Architecture” across Corporate America as well as globally. Well over half of the projects I’ve led with clients in the last few years have involved the introduction or updating of Job Architecture.

Why the surge? In my 30+ years of consulting I’ve observed the pendulum swing from overly precise and internally focused job leveling systems, marked by hierarchical grade structures and point factor job evaluation plans, to highly unstructured and externally focused job leveling systems, represented by broad bands and market reference points. Compensation practitioners went from being NASA-caliber scientists to abstract expressionists practically overnight. But the pendulum now seems to have found its plumb line, where job leveling is neither complex nor unstructured. With Job Architecture, it’s now based on the straightforward concept of “career levels”. More on this in a moment.

So what is Job Architecture? It starts with Job Family Architecture (known affectionately as “JFA”), which organizes jobs into increasingly homogeneous buckets of work. For example, the Human Resources Function contains a number of related and more specific Sub-Functions, one of which is Talent Development, which in turn contains a number of related and very specific Job Families, one of which is Technical Training. By doing so you create a map that shows the relationship among the organization’s jobs.

The premise is quite simple: Most jobs are common across a wide swath of organizations when you strip away company-specific nuances baked into obscure titling and random reporting relationships. With a common language, it’s now easier for management to recruit candidates and establish competitive wages, and easier for employees to identify career paths.

The other primary component of Job Architecture is the Career Framework (affectionately known as “the Career Framework”). Whereas JFA sorts jobs by functional area, the Career Framework organizes jobs into Career Tracks and Career Track Levels. Career Tracks builds on the concept of “dual ladders”, which took root in the ’90’s as a way to give individual contributors in IT, Engineering and Science a career path that didn’t force them into people management roles. Career Frameworks go a step further by also breaking out individual contributor jobs into Professional and Support tracks, to provide adequate career progression opportunities for both categories of jobs.

Each individual contributor Track has some number of Career Track Levels, which are defined in simple terms and differentiate jobs on the basis of impact and complexity, from entry level to highly advanced. Management Track jobs are differentiated on the basis of management scope, from first-line supervisors up to direct reports to the CEO. This is the same approach used by most of the reputable compensation benchmarking surveys. No haggling over points. No struggling to find the right survey match.

Titling also falls under the umbrella of Job Architecture, and I strongly encourage my clients to “bite the bullet” and use this window of opportunity to clean up titles and have them reinforce the JFA and Career Framework.

Unlike other job leveling structures, Job Architecture is more than a tool for managers to make pay decisions. It provides organizational clarity to help employees understand where they fit in, and where their careers can take them.