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Preparing for an HCM implementation
Aligning job architecture for a better talent experience
Talent is the foundation of organizational value. That’s why it’s crucial to architect talent activities with care and foresight. Designing a consistent job architecture is an important component of the talent experience. Beyond that, it’s essential for improving the human experience at work.
Explore content
- Enhancing the talent experience
- What are characteristics of good job architecture?
- Three approaches to job architecture implementation
- Job architecture project timing
- Get in touch
Enhancing the talent experience
At its most basic level, job architecture is the infrastructure of jobs within an organization—a framework that helps identify the level and type of work performed. Typical elements of job architecture include job functions, families, job levels with associated criteria, and job titling conventions.
Job architecture is an integral phase of large human capital management (HCM) implementations. It also serves as the foundation of integrated talent management systems, helping organizations realize the full value of their technology investments and increase capabilities to support more robust talent programs.
Organizations are increasingly interested in furthering their talent programs, such as competencies, career pathing, and succession management, as part of the HCM implementation; many aspects of these can most efficiently be developed based on the job framework..
Effective job architecture provides the rigor needed to systematically realign and harmonize jobs, while at the same time addressing system requirements, talent management needs, financial controls, and employee strengths, desires, and abilities.
What are characteristics of good job architecture?
Job architecture unlocks the functionality of talent processes as the foundation of all talent-related and transformative activities. Three groups benefit most from the job architecture—employees, human resources (HR), and managers. The benefits impact employees and management across the organization, who can use the organized, clean data to inform strategic decisions..
- Employees follow an interest-driven path: Imagine being able to use self-service career tools to search for answers to inquiries such as “find career opportunities,” “compare me to jobs,” or “navigate my career.” Imagine taking a guided career journey, matched to your interests, and being provided a transparent career path, allowing for skill development and mobility within and across career tracks. A well-documented job catalog can improve talent mobility by connecting employees to defined competencies and proficiency levels within a job architecture. Career pathing is also improved by having consistent and standardized job titles.
- HR processes and structures are streamlined: Imagine having a consistent job structure and fewer job titles to choose from when performing HR transactions, such as updating pay ranges, new hires, or job postings. Imagine having analytic capabilities that deliver insights on global workforce planning. Imagine having a job structure so well-defined that pay programs are designed to reflect the external and internal value of jobs, creating an opportunity to recalibrate pay practices.
- Managers gain a holistic view of talent components: Imagine being able to see real and live information on your team and their work, improving productivity by identifying redundancies, functional duplications, and accountability overlap. Imagine being able to align employees to critical talent components (such as performance indicators and compensation) and then being able to identify opportunities for development. Having fewer positions and a more robust job structure allows for the identification of critical employees, better role clarity, and stronger analytics—all of which result from a strategic job architecture.
- Enterprises gain efficiency and insight from single source of data: Imagine having foundational and uniform talent data that can be utilized and consumed across the enterprise to make better strategic, financial, and business decisions.
Three approaches to job architecture implementation
There are three approaches for rolling out a job architecture project in conjunction with a human capital management implementation:
Perform only the critical activities to transfer existing structure into new HCM structure.
This option requires very minimal time and effort in job architecture—and minimal design and implementation input from stakeholders outside of the core team. Subject-matter experts can be consulted as needed. However, any existing issues or data discrepancies can often transfer into a future-state job structure, thereby reducing the value received by the integrated talent management system.
Perform core job design and mapping activities to achieve a future job structure.
With this option, increased support required by stakeholders for job and employee mapping results in increased business and HR buy-in of the new structure. Employees gain greater clarity of roles across the enterprise resulting in increased mobility, while managers gain greater ease in forming mission-based teams for specific business outcomes. Ultimately, the organization improves system effectiveness while receiving core benefits to operational processes and modules, including talent.
Integrate core job structure activities with skills, capabilities and other talent design activities resulting in a holistic and integrated job and workforce architecture.
This option represents the full implementation of job architecture and related career elements to harness the benefits of HCM technology on a global level. This goes one step further than the core job architecture option by enabling new role identification reflecting the future of work. This solution provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities that inform employee career paths and set the foundation for determining both internal and external equity.
Job architecture project timing
There are four different options to consider when deciding the best time to conduct a job architecture project with an HCM implementation on the horizon:
Occurs prior to the design phase of the HCM implementation, offering a longer lead time to meet HCM deadlines. This extra time can allow for greater stakeholder participation in the design process. However, the job architecture design should be sufficiently complete and without need for significant redesign prior to implementation for option to be viable. The organization should also ensure that there are available resources and time at this early stage.
Allows for the job architecture work to take place in conjunction with the HCM activities, which can help create a greater sense of urgency. However, this timeline is tight, without room for flexibility, and can hinder the level of participation in the design effort. Given the rigid timeline, it’s important the job architecture does not require significant redesign, as employee impacts and communications also need to be factored in.
Offers generous time to complete the “ideal job architecture,” as there’s no pressure to meet deadlines pertaining to the HCM work. However, given this happens after go-live, there may be a lag in gaining the full benefits of the technology investment, as well as potential increases to overall development costs especially if rework and reconfiguration is needed (e.g., changes to business processes where tied to components of job architecture). Moreover, stakeholders will not be able to see the full benefits of the integrated talent management system before the go-live date.
Allows the job architecture work for a part of the organization to take place in conjunction with the HCM activities, but without an aggressive timeline, because much of the job architecture design takes place post-go-live. This option provides foundational job architecture components upon which to build the system and is most efficient in terms of overall development costs. However, the hybrid approach can introduce similar risks of potential reconfiguration post-go-live, and the organization must have the available resources to drive the job architecture work long term.
Depending on which approach organizations take, critical job architecture decision points will need to line up with broader system implementation timelines.
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