Job Architecture: Building structure into an evolving world

Unleash the true potential of your organization by modernizing your job architecture. By defining work of equal value and providing clarity on responsibilities and skills, it becomes the blueprint that fosters fairness, equity, and transparency. Embrace a future where every employee is empowered to thrive and reach their full potential.
Employees who feel their career goals can be met at their organization are twice as committed to their employer.
Mercer’s US Inside Employees Minds 2023-2024 Study

 

 

Unlocking the power of talent:
A modern approach to job architecture

A job architecture serves as a consistent foundation and framework for career progression within an organization. It addresses the issue of fairness, whether it is real or perceived in rewards, which can significantly impact employee engagement. By implementing a job architecture underpinned with job evaluation and skills, organizations can effectively mitigate the risk of unfairness and promote transparency.

A well-designed job architecture provides a transparent and consistent framework for employee development and career advancement. It ensures that all employees have equal opportunities for growth and progression within the organization. In today's dynamic and evolving work environment, where work is structured based on accountabilities and required skills rather than traditional job titles, it is crucial to adopt new approaches in connecting talent to work.

Managing work through a different lens is essential, and job architecture can offer valuable insights and solutions for effectively navigating these changes and optimizing talent utilization. By understanding the evolving nature of work and aligning talent accordingly, organizations can enhance their ability to meet customer demands and drive success. Additionally, job architecture helps organizations establish fair and equitable practices, fostering a positive work environment and promoting employee satisfaction and engagement.

 Modern Job architectures are underpinned by skills to provide agility and fuel performance as organizations transform, a shift that benefits both employers and employees.

Employers

  • Enhances talent outcomes via a seamless and engaging employee experience that boosts engagement and retention
  • Streamlines HR processes to improve efficiencies and effectiveness in using HR tech
  • Manages workforce costs by identifying potential areas of ineffective function, job and work design
  • Enables more precise talent investments through identification of business-critical skills and differentiated reward strategies
  • Accelerates workforce planning and analytics by enabling measurement and evaluation of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of jobs and skills
  • Drives compliance strategies for pay equity and transparency allowing for risk mitigation and streamlined compliance reporting

Employees

  • Clarifies expectations and accountabilities for success in current roles
  • Provides transparency on skills needed for career progression, and ultimately, increased pay
  • Empowers employees to actively manage their career choices by providing visibility into opportunities that align with individual needs and goals
  • Supports individual learning pathways for skill development, goal achievement and job security
  • Fosters trust through transparent and fair criteria for performance, progression and pay
  • Enables recognition and reward for skill attainment aligned to the organization’s needs
When viewed in such a light, a skills-enabled job architecture should sit at the core of every HR strategy, touching on all workforce initiatives. Yet, our research shows that while 76% of US organizations have a job architecture, only about 20% of organization include skills in their framework. With fewer than half of organizations, saying their job architecture meets the needs of the business, it’s clear that something needs to change. 

Key challenges we often see: 

Lack of definition 

Job architectures are the basis for defining equal work, which by most legislations is defined as substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility be performed under similar working conditions. However, few organizations have defined jobs through this lens, leading to inconsistency across the organization, and potential inequities. More needs to be done to ensure that jobs are clearly defined and levels are clearly differentiated to provide the basis for establishing fair and equitable pay.

Even in organizations with formal career progression frameworks, career path information is often not readily available and career conversations are not happening regularly enough. More needs to be done to help employees recognize the compelling opportunities that exist within their own organizations to build their career, including frequent conversations with their manager to help brainstorm possible career moves, and strategize how to build their skill set.

Lack of transparency

Even in organizations with robust job architectures in place, it’s often hiding in systems and not readily available to power career conversations. More needs to be done to help employees recognize the compelling opportunities that exist within their own organizations to build their career, including visibility to potential career paths, skills they need to advance, and honest conversations with their manager on how they can grow their skills to grow their career.

Business-Led, HR enabled

In order to deliver on business needs, the architecture should be aligned to business objectives. Job architectures need to be intentionally designed at micro and macro levels, aligned to business needs and objectives. Critical skills needed to drive business success should be defined at every level and across every function within the organization. The job architecture is the perfect vehicle for delivering skills at scale, to provide a basis for measuring skill gaps across the organization, and the talent strategies needed to close them.

Because great career opportunities drive talent retention. Let your people grow with you.

Examining the Impact: A Deeper Dive into Organizational ROI

The ROI can be tangibly measured through:

  • Identification, management and governance of level and pay inflation
  • Equitable outcomes in pay and career opportunities
  • Improved productivity
  • Increased engagement and retention
  • HR process cost reductions

Case Studies

  • Food Service Organization: Driving Retention
    A separate career track was developed for the company’s hourly employees which enabled meaningful differentiation in rewards and recognition and resulted in turnover reductions from 24% to 7% in the first year after implementation.
  • Consumer Goods Organization: Boosting Engagement
    A skills-based approach to talent management drove increased clarity in expectations, targeted development opportunities and greater career perspective, resulting in +60% eNPS score recorded by employees.
  • Professional Services Organization: Cost Management
    A new job architecture was developed and deployed at a financial services organization, which found that 15% of employees were misaligned by one level, with an estimated cost impact representing over 2% of salary.
  • Manufacturing Organization: Improved Efficiency
    Our work with a manufacturing company discovered that the client’s use of a part-time workforce resulted in $5M compensation savings but losing an estimated $30M in productivity. Mercer partnered with them to redesign the roles to prioritize full-time work.

Related insights

    Modernize your job architecture with Mercer today. 

    Speak to our workforce consultants today on designing a fair, equitable and transparent job architecture, powered by skills, so you can motivate your people to grow with you.