Today’s markets, customers, and technologies are rapidly driving change in the work people do and the skills that are needed to deliver results.
A solid work architecture in today’s market is crucial because it provides a structured framework for defining roles, responsibilities, and career progression within an organisation. It helps you to standardise job titles, pay scales, and expectations, ensuring consistency and fairness across departments. And a well‑designed job architecture supports your talent management, succession planning, and compensation strategies, making it easier for your organisation to attract and retain top talent.
Korn Ferry helps you adapt to whatever comes next with a team that’s prepared to rise to any challenge, enhancing transparency and allowing employees to understand their career paths and growth opportunities within the organisation. By clearly outlining job functions and levels so that businesses can better align their workforce with strategic goals, you can improve overall efficiency and position your organisation as the best place to start or grow a career.
How We Can Help
We are the global authorities of work and career architecture—bringing deep and practical expertise, unrivalled IP, and decades of experience in helping organisations to reshape, rethink, and future-proof their approaches to work. More organisations use our work measurement methodology to generate real-world results than any other.
We use our proprietary Korn Ferry Architect software to help you design new jobs with an understanding of how they fit in with the ones you already have, then show you how to use that job architecture to consistently get the best out of your people.
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How is work delivered across your organisation today? How will it need to transform for the future? We create a roadmap for this structure that works for you long-term—tailored to the specific needs of your business.
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We help you transform into a more skills-based organisation by building and delivering skills-focused strategies to enhance agility, talent attraction, retention, and future readiness. We have a comprehensive, research-based approach to the identification and development of skills, linking this to the work to be done in order to maximise impact on your business.
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We offer a clear definition of your jobs at every level by measuring for size, shape, accountability, problem-solving, and know-how. Then, we link those jobs to the competencies, skills, and personal characteristics your people need to thrive, empowering you to match the right talent with the right roles and identify the real value of work—so you know you’re paying your people their true worth.
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We work with you to define grade structures and unearth unconscious biases that may mean you’re paying unfairly. We categorise jobs using proven, evidence-based, bias-free criteria so you’re offering equal pay for work of equal value, and apply diversity, equity, and inclusion as a competitive advantage by highlighting your fair pay practices.
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Our Korn Ferry Success Profiles reflect decades of research and analysis of what “great” looks like in any role. We use these to accelerate building a career framework that communicates how work value is created, and identifies what employees need to do to advance their careers. When your people know the skills, competencies, and experiences they need to progress, it’s easier to set goals that help them get there.
Job Evaluation Software for Designing and Measuring Work Impact
Korn Ferry Architect provides organisation and talent planning architecture for an agile, future-focused workforce where everyone feels empowered to achieve their full potential.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Work Architecture
A career architecture is how an organisation structures its career paths. It’s a roadmap that outlines the different levels of jobs in an organisation plus details the competencies, skills, knowledge and experience required to progress through each level of responsibility. A work architecture is important because it allows employees to understand the potential opportunities available so they can set developmental goals and aspirations. In short, a career architecture gives employees a strong sense of purpose.
There are six key components of a career architecture:
- Job families: A job family is a group of jobs that shares similar responsibilities and requires similar skills or qualifications. For example, in a technology company, job families could be software engineering, product management and data science.
- Job levels: A job level is a hierarchical position within each job family. Each job level has a set of specific requirements that employees must have or develop before progressing to the next job level. The requirements typically consist of experience, skills and competencies.
- Competencies: A competency is the knowledge, skill and ability required to perform a job effectively. Competencies are the building blocks of job levels and job families.
- Career paths: A career path is the route that an employee takes as they progress through job levels and job families. A career path can be vertical, meaning that it progresses within the same job family, or horizontal, meaning that it crosses different job families.
- Performance management: Performance management is the process of evaluating an employee’s work and offering feedback on opportunities for improvement. It helps employees identify areas where they can develop and improve their skills so they can progress through the career framework.
- Talent development: Talent development is the set of programs and activities that an organisation offers to help employees develop the skills and knowledge they need to advance in their careers. Talent development programs may include training, coaching and mentoring, among many other options.
Organisations with an effective work architecture set themselves up to deliver on their mission and achieve their strategic goals. Here is a list of the typical steps that organisations should follow to develop a robust work architecture:
- Define job families and levels: The first step is to define what job families and job levels align with your organisation’s strategic goals. Each job family should represent a unique set of skills and competencies. Each job level should represent a clear progression in an employee’s responsibilities, skills and experience.
- Identify key competencies: Next, decide which competencies are required for success at each job level within each job family. Clearly define the competencies and link them back to the organisation’s strategic objectives.
- Create career paths: The organisation needs to set a career path that shows how employees can progress through each job family and job level. Every employee should be able to access and understand the career paths available to them.
- Align performance management processes: It’s essential that performance management target the competencies that employees need for success at each job level and each job family. This alignment will ensure that employees are progressing and motivate them to continue working toward their goals.
- Develop talent: Offer training and development opportunities that align with the competencies required for success at each job level. These opportunities may include coaching, mentoring, job rotations and other development programs.
- Monitor and refine: Organisation leaders should regularly review and refine the work architecture to ensure that it remains aligned with the organisation’s strategic goals.
A career framework is a valuable tool for succession planning and talent management. It identifies key skills and competencies that employees need at each level. It also helps eliminate bias from career progression, ensuring that all employees are evaluated on the same criteria. Organisations can use this information to develop training programs and initiatives that cultivate these competencies in both current employees and future hires.
Employees also benefit from a clear career framework, because they know what skills, knowledge and experience they need to progress in their careers. They better understand their current level of competence and identify their development opportunities so they can plan how to advance in their job.
Establishing a career framework also signals to employees that an organisation takes their development seriously. Thus, it serves as a powerful tool for recruitment, attracting candidates who know they have the qualifications to succeed in a role. A career framework also plays a critical role in employee motivation and retention. Employees are more likely to be committed to an organisation that gives them a sense of purpose and direction in their careers.
