A clear view of how roles are connected. Crystal-clear career paths. And smarter decisions around pay. In this article, we take a closer look at why pay equity analysis should be built on a well-thought-out job architecture, and share practical tips to help you succeed, step by step.
This is part of our blog series on pay equity analysis in practice. In the series, we share practical tips and best practices for those who want to get the most value out of Pay Equity Compass, the tool that makes it easier to get things right when it comes to pay equity analysis and pay transparency. Read the other parts here.
What is a job architecture, and why does it matter?
If you are already familiar with the basics of pay equity analysis, the concept of job architecture may not be new to you. But for the sake of clarity, let’s start there: what do we mean by job architecture, and why is it such a central part of pay equity analysis?
In short, job architecture is the backbone of your organisation’s different types of work. It creates structure, ties everything together and makes it easier to see which roles exist, how they are connected and how they can be compared in a consistent way. Instead of looking only at job titles, you look at what the work actually involves: which area the role belongs to, what level of responsibility it carries and what requirements are placed on the work.
In Pay Equity Compass, the job architecture consists of three key parts:
Job families: what the employee works with, such as IT, Finance or HR. If needed, several related job families can also be grouped under a broader category, known as a job function.
Career bands: the level of responsibility the work involves, such as operational, tactical, manager with people responsibility or executive management.
Job profiles: describing the work itself and bring together positions that correspond to the same or a similar role. This is where positions are linked to the right profile, together with details such as work description, career band, pay range and any relevant market salary.
A well-thought-out job architecture creates structure ahead of the pay equity analysis and makes it easier to see how the organisation’s different types of work are connected. At the same time, it plays an important strategic role. More specifically, it helps you:
- create an overview of the content, responsibility levels and requirements linked to different jobs, an important foundation for job evaluation, mapping and analysis of pay differences
- ensure transparent, fair and competitive pay setting
- highlight career paths and development opportunities in the workplace
- take a more targeted approach to talent supply and workforce planning.
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How to build your job architecture, step by step
In Pay Equity Compass, you build your job architecture in four steps:
1. Create Job Functions and Job Families
Start by grouping work according to business area and competence area, such as Finance, IT, Accounting or HR. The purpose is to create a structure that shows where in the organisation the work belongs and which types of work are connected.
If you need a broader level, you can use job functions. A job function is the highest level in the job architecture and brings together several related job families into larger, logical groups.
Within a job function, you then create job families to group related work within the same area. For example, within the Finance job function, you might have the Accounting job family, which includes roles such as controllers, accountants and analysts.
Even if one analyst works in the marketing department and another in production, they can still belong to the same job family and job function. This gives you a fair overview that reflects the organisation’s actual competence areas rather than its management structure.
2. Add career bands
The next step is to describe the level of responsibility. Is it an operational role, a more tactical role, a management role or a role in executive management? Career bands help you distinguish between different levels.
3. Build Job Profiles
Next, you bring the actual positions together in job profiles and link them to the right job family and career band. This makes it clearer what the work involves and how it should be handled in the pay equity analysis.
4. Carry out the job evaluation
Once the structure is in place, you can start evaluating the work. The job profiles are then assessed based on requirements and level of difficulty, making it possible to compare even different types of work in a more consistent way.
Keeping your job architecture up to date
So, can you sit back and relax once your job architecture is in place? Well, not quite. New teams may be formed, roles may change and positions may need to be moved or relinked. When that happens, the structure needs to keep up.
In Pay Equity Compass, we have focused on making this as smooth as possible. Under Pay Compass > Job Architecture, you get a visual overview of how the organisation’s different types of work are structured. This makes it easier to see where different roles belong, spot when something no longer adds up and make ongoing adjustments.
Instead of saving all changes until the next pay equity analysis, which often becomes both cumbersome and uncertain, you can keep the structure updated on an ongoing basis.
Let’s take a closer look at two concrete examples and how to handle them:
Example 1: The level of responsibility changes
Sometimes, a role grows beyond its original form. Perhaps an employee is given formal people responsibility, or moves from an operational role to becoming a tactical specialist. In that case, the job profile may need to be moved to a different career band, so that the structure reflects the role’s new level of responsibility.
Here’s how: Find the existing job profile and select Edit. From there, you can, for example, move the work from Employee, operational to Employee, tactical and save the change.
Example 2: The evaluation needs fine-tuning
In other cases, it is not about the career band, but about the evaluation itself. The complexity of the work may have changed over time, or you may discover that a previous assessment needs to be adjusted. Perhaps one type of work has received similar points to another role, even though in practice they are not equivalent.
Here’s how: Use the Calibration function. In the calibration view, click the relevant work and the category where the assessment needs to be reviewed. There, you can see the evaluation questions used to assess the work and adjust the evaluation fields directly in the view.
In short: the more continuously you maintain your job architecture, the better the conditions for accurate job evaluation, pay equity analysis and analysis.
Want to know more?
Are you using Flex HRM Pay Equity Compass and want to learn more about how to work smarter with job architecture, and everything else related to pay equity analysis? Read more in our Knowledge Base.
Have you not taken the step to Pay Equity Compass yet, but are curious to learn more? Get in touch and we’ll show you how it works!
