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In many organisations, jobs have been created organically, which can lead to chaotic and inconsistent job data, with little or no structure, governance or overall management.
On a practical level, this makes it very difficult for organisations to make sense of their job data, which can lead to issues such as inconsistent salary ranges across roles, departments and regions.
Implementation of a job family framework can help avoid this chaos and can also deliver a range of benefits.
Simplifying pay structures
With a job family framework in place, organisations have a simplified framework for managing pay and reward.
Fewer distinct reward structures mean that managing pay processes can be more easily managed and pay information can be communicated more effectively.
Job families also simplify the process of determining appropriate pay ranges for different roles, as organisations can use market data and industry benchmarks specific to each job family.
A more consistent skills framework
Many organisations are moving towards a more skills-based approach, and this requires a clear understanding of the work being done on the ground and the skills needed to deliver this work.
A consistent job framework is an ideal mechanism to capture, manage and govern these skills. This works in two ways:
Grouping jobs together into job families based on similar skills allows you to identify and categorise the key skills your organisation needs.
With all your roles linked to a consistent skills framework, you can understand the skills landscape for your entire organisation.
Designing career paths
A job family framework in place makes it easier to map out potential career paths for employees.
This enables employees to understand what steps there are for progression within an organisation and plays a key role in staff retention.
Development of learning content
Job families based on common skills and/or capabilities help facilitate the development of learning content, often through Capability Academies.
A key advantage is that Capability Academies can be aligned to job family frameworks, which enable the identification of skills gaps and the creation of relevant training.
More accurate reporting
A job family framework helps simplify reporting requirements, whether that is for equal pay, gender pay gap analysis or other compliance and legislative reporting requirements.
A job family framework helps you identify roles across the business that are on a par with one another. It is the most effective way of achieving accurate and legally compliant reporting.
Simplification of job evaluation processes
If a job evaluation process is in place, a job family structure makes it possible to evaluate the high-level roles within each family rather than evaluating each job in each location or team.
By introducing broad categories of accountabilities for each role, as jobs change, the new tasks required are still likely to sit within the broad task category and therefore won’t necessitate a new job evaluation.
Enable pay transparency
A job family structure can often facilitate better communication and transparency around pay, a key issue with pay transparency being introduced around the world.
When you have a job family structure with standardised role profiles and job titles, you’re able to establish your grading and pay bandings at this higher level.
Individuals can then see how their role fits into the broader structure of the organisation, and they can more easily understand how compensation decisions are made and how their pay compares to others in similar roles.
Simplify pay equity analysis
Where roles are grouped into job families based on skills and responsibilities, it simplifies the process of understanding whether employees are paid differently, even though their experience and skills for the role may be the same.
Workforce agility
Aligning your jobs into job families is an enabler of better workforce planning and increased workforce agility. It provides you with the framework to consolidate all your skills and work in a structured format, which then allows you to identify commonalities of skills and work and increase your workforce agility.
For example, if you are looking to see where skills may exist in the organisation to support specific, strategic initiatives or if you are looking at redeploying skills in a reorganisation, your job family structure allows you to see where you have commonality of skills so you can more rapidly deploy and relocate employees.
