Senior Client Partner
Future of Work
5 Questions to Ask When Optimizing Your Job Architecture
Is your job architecture framework ready for tomorrow’s workforce needs? Answer Korn Ferry's five key questions to find out.
June 02, 2025
Adapting Your Organization’s Career Architecture to Be Ready for the Future of Work
An organization’s job architecture shapes how work gets done and how talent progresses. It's the structured framework that defines roles, career paths, and compensation within an organization.
As businesses change, there’s one question you'll hear a lot in C-suite conversations—is our job architecture helping or hindering our ability to adapt?
For many companies, the answer reveals uncomfortable truths.
Traditional job architectures, with their rigid hierarchies, standardized job levels, and linear career paths, weren’t built for today’s pace of change. They can’t flex to meet shifting skills needs or evolving employee expectations.
What once provided stability can now become a roadblock when agility and rapid adaptation are critical for success.
To stay ahead, your job architecture framework should:
- Enable swift talent mobility across teams
- Support diverse, non-linear career paths
- Accelerate skill-building at scale
- Ensure fair and competitive pay
If your framework isn’t delivering on these fronts, it’s time to optimize.
But before rushing to make changes, here are five essential questions talent leaders need to consider.
Question 1: What Are You Trying to Achieve?
The success of your job architecture depends on how well it aligns with your organization's goals. What works for one company may not work for another.
For example, an e-commerce company looking to scale quickly and respond to shifting customer demands might need a job structure that’s as flexible as its market is. “Your organization’s strategic ambitions should directly shape your architecture’s design. You must first have a clear understanding of what your business is trying to achieve,” says Harm van Vijfeyken, Senior Client Partner, Korn Ferry.
By broadening role definitions, such as merging all digital marketing roles into one job family, they can move people seamlessly between projects and adjust responsibilities as needs evolve.
When assessing your workforce structure, consider your business objectives:
- Planning global expansion? Your architecture should help you scale teams and standardize structures across markets.
- Driving innovation? You'll need a flexible framework that lets you create new roles and career paths quickly.
- Focusing on efficiency? Your job architecture should provide clear accountability and structured progression paths.
These priorities become the foundation for a framework that truly aligns with your organizational objectives.
Question 2: How Many Job Levels Do You Need?
The number of job levels in your framework impacts everything from promotion paths and job grading to reward structures and organizational agility.
For example, having 12 job levels might give employees more chances for promotion, but it can create a real challenge for leaders. With so many small steps, it’s tough to make clear distinctions in responsibilities and pay that feel meaningful with each move up.
On the other hand, having just three broad levels can make the gaps feel too big. A junior employee could wait years for a promotion, even as their skills and responsibilities grow.
When optimizing your job levels, consider:
- Organizational Agility
Fewer levels typically enable faster structural changes. - Role Complexity
More specialized roles might need additional levels to recognize expertise stages. - Promotion Philosophy
Decide whether frequent smaller steps or significant jumps in responsibility best suit your business needs. - Compensation Strategy
Think about how you want to manage pay progression between levels.
Your choice of levels will determine how well your organization can balance structure with the flexibility needed to respond to future workforce needs.
Question 3: How Should You Structure Your Job Families?
Job families are the backbone of how work gets organized across your company. They create meaningful links between roles, giving employees a clear path to growth while ensuring the business has the right talent in the right place.
But how broad or narrow should these families be? That’s where the challenge lies for leaders.
You could take a wide-lens approach, grouping all data and analytics roles together, whether they support finance, marketing, or operations. This builds agility, making it easier to move people between departments and establish shared skill standards.
Or you could define job families by function, keeping finance analysts separate from marketing analysts. That preserves deep expertise but can create silos that make internal mobility harder.
The best organizational structure should balance business goals with employee career growth.
“When designing job families, you need to consider both perspectives,” says Serena Jones, Senior Client Partner, Korn Ferry. “HR needs clear frameworks for managing roles and pay, but employees need to see where they can grow in their careers. If they can’t see these opportunities, you could risk losing them,” she warns.
When updating your job families, keep in mind:
- Career Visibility
How clearly can employees see potential moves between departments? - Emerging Capabilities
Where do new skills, around AI for example, fit within existing families? - Team Flexibility
How easily can you bring together people from different areas of the business? - Innovation
Can you adapt roles quickly as your business model evolves?
The goal isn't just to group similar work. It's to create a structure that helps employees grow while giving your organization room to evolve.
Question 4: How Should You Define Roles?
Once you've assessed your levels and job families, the next thing to consider is what each role actually means in practice.
A well-defined role needs to balance clarity with adaptability. It should spell out key responsibilities while leaving room for the role to evolve.
Too rigid, and you'll constantly need updates. Too vague, and people won't know what's expected of them.
When defining roles, focus on key areas, such as:
- Core Responsibilities: Clear outcomes and deliverables
- Key Skills: Must-have skills and competencies
- Success Metrics: Performance standards and expectations
- Growth Path: Links to other roles and advancement opportunities
- Common Language: Consistent terminology across the organization
Clear role definitions help drive better decision-making. For example, when managers understand exactly what each role requires, they're equipped to make better hiring choices and talent development plans.
When compensation teams know the scope of each role, they can set appropriate pay levels. And when employees see clear skill requirements, they can target their development efforts effectively.
Question 5: How Will You Bring This to Life?
Even the best-designed job architecture can fail if people don't understand it or know how to use it.
To implement it successfully, you need to align your HR systems and engage your people. Show them how the career framework makes their jobs easier while building it into your existing processes.
“Your job architecture needs to become a living framework that guides daily decisions, not just sit on a shelf,” says Jones.
When bringing your optimized job architecture to life, focus on these six things:
- Clear Communication
Create simple guides that connect the framework to everyday decisions like hiring, promotions, and talent development. - Stakeholder Engagement
Build a network of champions who can help teams understand and apply the framework. - System Integration
Embed the framework into your existing HR tools and processes. - Change Management
Plan a phased rollout, starting with pilot teams, to build confidence and momentum. - Regular Reviews
Update the framework periodically to reflect organizational changes. - Success Metrics
Track key indicators like internal mobility rates and time-to-hire to show impact and guide improvements.
Optimize Your Job Architecture for the Future of Work
Your job architecture must support not just today’s needs but also tomorrow's ways of working. Answering these five questions will determine how well your framework supports this.
Ready to turn insights into action?
Our new eBook shares expert tips and strategies for optimizing your job architecture to meet future workforce needs. Download the eBook.
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