Can Your Job Architecture Support the Work of a
Fast Evolving Business?
Today’s markets, customers, and technologies are 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 organization. It helps you to standardize 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 organization 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 organization. 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 organization 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, unrivaled IP, and decades of experience in helping organizations to reshape, rethink, and future-proof their approaches to work. More organizations 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.
Designing a Job Architecture for Your Business
How is work delivered across your organization 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.
Transform Your Business Through Skills-Focused Talent Strategies
We help you transform into a more skills-based organization 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 maximize impact on your business.
Defining and Measuring Jobs at Every Level
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.
Rewarding People Fairly for the Jobs They Do
We work with you to define grade structures and unearth unconscious biases that may mean you’re paying unfairly. We categorize 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.
Developing People in Their Careers
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.
What We Do
At Korn Ferry, we know people better than anyone. We can translate your business objectives into talent and workforce demands—anticipating what it will take to effectively execute your business and people strategy.
- Job Architecture
We design a structured job architecture framework to define roles, responsibilities, and career progression specific to your organization’s work and culture for pay grades, promotions, and mobility. - Job Analysis and Design
We use our Korn Ferry Architect software to help you allocate accountability at the job level, so work gets done efficiently and effectively. - Grade Structure Design
We build job grade structures that reflect an organization’s unique structure and culture, underpinned by our proprietary Korn Ferry Hay Job Evaluation Method to ensure fairness. - Career Frameworks
We engage and enable talent by designing nonlinear career paths that accelerate development through skills and experiences anchored in work. We define roles and career paths that are flexible and based on related or complementary skills to nurture talent and engage employees. - Reward
We level jobs into salary ranges and help you optimize pay costs based on the measured value of work. - Organization Design
We determine whether organizations have the right number of roles in the right places at the right level of work and whether there are gaps or redundancies in organization design. We’ll also work with you to optimize your people costs— helping you manage headcount more effectively.
- Skills-Focused Talent Strategies
We support organizations in defining a skills-focused talent journey, helping them understand which skills will be most impactful for the future, and how to develop them. - Job Evaluation
We measure your jobs using our Guide Chart—Profile Method® of job evaluation—the world’s leading foundation for determining appropriate levels for each role. - Succession Planning
We measure succession risk by evaluating the stretch across leadership roles—taking into account progressive role demands and the leadership capabilities required. - Job Family Modeling
We help you design and build custom approaches to measuring work in job families that make sense for your business, linking your work to your talent and clearly communicating expectations and careers. - Support Pay Transparency with Equal Pay for Equal Work
We implement robust methods for measuring jobs, ensuring organizations pay every individual fairly and equally for the work that they do. - Role-Based Assessment
We anchor assessments in the context of the role—mapping competencies, skills and talent profiles that determine success, so organizations get the best fit between the talents of individuals, and the work to be accomplished.
Our experts
Work & Career Architecture Insights
Organization Strategy
Aligning people, leaders, organization, and culture to implement an effective business strategy.
Speak to a WORK & CAREER ARCHITECTURE EXPERT
FAQ about work architecture
What are the key components of organization career architecture?
A career architecture is how an organization structures its career paths. It’s a roadmap that outlines the different levels of jobs in an organization 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 organization 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.
How can organizations develop an effective work architecture?
Organizations 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 organizations 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 organization’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 organization’s strategic objectives.
- Create career paths: The organization 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: Organization leaders should regularly review and refine the work architecture to ensure that it remains aligned with the organization’s strategic goals.
Why is a career framework important?
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. Organizations 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 organization 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 organization that gives them a sense of purpose and direction in their careers.
