Building a Job Architecture for Pay Transparency
You already have a job architecture. But will it hold up in the era of pay transparency? Here’s how to fix gaps and build a stronger structure.
Pay transparency is changing how organizations define, structure, and defend pay.
A growing number of regions around the world are requiring employers to share salary ranges and report on pay gaps. For global HR leaders, this creates significant pressure. You need to explain how pay decisions are made and be prepared to stand behind them.
That’s where job architecture comes in.
If your role definitions, levels, and salary bands don’t line up, transparency will expose the gaps. Employees will question them, candidates will compare them, and regulators will expect answers.
“There’s a move toward clear and consistent pay communications,” says Korn Ferry senior client partner Tom McMullen. “The overall trend is a shift from pay as a confidential and discretionary practice to pay as a visible and strategic component of the employee value proposition.”
Organizations are already adjusting.
“We're seeing organizations waking up to the fact that they have to change things internally to be ready for pay transparency,” says Vijay Gandhi, regional director of digital for Korn Ferry EMEA. “A clear, consistent job architecture is a critical piece of that puzzle.”
If your structure isn’t clear, it won’t hold up under scrutiny. But when it is, it gives you something just as important as compliance—a fair, consistent foundation for how you pay, grow, and retain your people.
At a Glance
Situation
Pay transparency putting pressure on organizations to clearly explain salary ranges and compensation decisions.
Challenge
Many job architectures lack consistency in job leveling, role definitions, and pay ranges, leaving gaps that become visible under scrutiny.
Opportunity
Build a transparent job architecture with clear structure and logic, enabling fair, defensible pay decisions and a stronger pay transparency strategy.
“Pay is no longer a private organizational decision. It’s become a public signal of fairness.”
Tom McMullen, Korn Ferry
What Does a Job Architecture Need to Support Pay Transparency?
A job architecture is a structured framework that defines roles, career paths, and compensation opportunities within an organization.
For it to be transparency-ready, it should create clear, defensible criteria based on the expertise, problem-solving, and accountability needed for the role, regardless of where the work is done, Gandhi explains. “It enables fairness and scalability, and it reduces discrepancies.”
It builds on these elements to deliver a fully defensible organization and job structure capable of withstanding even the most critical of evaluations.
“A transparency-ready job architecture is one that is clearly defined and consistently applied across the organization,” McMullen says. “It should include well-articulated job families, levels, and role expectations tied to objective criteria such as scope, impact, skills, and experience.”
Where Job Architecture Breaks Down
Many organizations don’t have a job architecture that can stand up to scrutiny.
A recent Korn Ferry survey of 1,600 C-suite and senior HR leaders hints at some of the consequences:
- Only 43% are highly confident that pay decisions are consistent and fair across comparable roles in their organization.
- Just 12% say compensation decisions are informed by both performance and skills data.
- 20% say managers in their organization make compensation decisions with intuition, not data.
The result is a system that doesn’t quite hold together.
- Job titles expand without clear meaning.
- Levels blur between roles.
- Responsibilities overlap.
- Pay structures vary across business units.
Some employees are in roles that don't match their skills. Others are paid against outdated ranges. And some are paid more than what the role requires.
“These issues are common because organizations often evolve and grow organically without periodically harmonizing their structures,” says McMullen. “That can work for a while, but when pay transparency is introduced into these types of environments, it introduces new risks.”
Those risks show up in three key ways:
- Compliance requirements in regions that require equal pay for equal work
- Erosion of trust when employees see differences leaders can’t explain
- Reputational damage when pay gaps become public
When any one of these risks manifests, it leaves HR leaders scrambling to explain decisions they can’t defend.
“Transparency acts as a spotlight,” McMullen says. “If the underlying system isn’t coherent, it will expose gaps.”
“Job holders are now more likely to leave an organization because they feel they are being treated unfairly than they are because they’re being offered more pay elsewhere.”
Vijay Gandhi, Korn Ferry
The Benefits of Evolving Your Job Architecture
Organizations that don't adapt their job architecture risk falling behind in attracting and retaining talent, as well as meeting business goals.
Beyond just organizing roles and titles, an updated job architecture delivers strategic advantages that directly impact business performance.
Here are four key benefits:
1. Build a Future-Ready Workforce
A modern job architecture helps organizations address one of their biggest transformation challenges—skills gaps.
With 63% of employers identifying skills gaps as a major barrier through 2030, and 39% of current skills becoming outdated in the next five years, companies need systematic ways to evolve their workforce capabilities.
A skills-based job architecture enables organizations to:
- Identify emerging skill requirements across roles
- Track which roles need reskilling or upskilling
- Plan workforce transitions as roles evolve
- Align training investments with future needs
2. Ensure Pay Equity and Transparency
With only 12% of companies having implemented pay transparency strategies, many organizations struggle to address compensation equity effectively.
An updated job architecture provides the essential foundation for transparent, consistent pay practices.
When roles are clearly defined and classified, companies can spot and fix pay gaps, making fair compensation decisions based on skills and responsibilities.
Organizations that embrace transparency have seen a 20% reduction in pay disparities, Korn Ferry research reveals.
An updated job architecture helps:
- Create transparent salary bands aligned with skills and market data
- Compare and standardize compensation decisions across departments
- Identify pay gaps through systematic role analysis
- Build objective criteria for compensation decisions
3. Improve Employee Experience
Two-thirds of workers told Korn Ferry that they would stay in a job they hated if they saw clear opportunities to learn and grow.
An updated job architecture improves the employee experience by providing this crucial clarity in career progression and reducing role ambiguity.
When employees understand their roles and see clear growth opportunities, they're more likely to stay engaged and committed to their work.
A modern job architecture helps employees:
- Understand their current role expectations clearly
- See potential career paths across the organization
- Identify skills needed for career growth
- Make informed decisions about their talent development
4. Develop Internal Talent Mobility
Organizations with active internal mobility programs see 41% higher retention rates, LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report reveals.
An updated job architecture makes this mobility possible by defining roles through skills and capabilities rather than rigid titles.
“It helps companies find and move talent within the organization based on skills, instead of always hiring from outside,” says Korn Ferry’s Serena Jones, Senior Client Partner. “This boosts upskilling and reskilling efforts, which is especially valuable since these employees already know your culture and ways of working.”
An optimized framework supports mobility by:
- Creating clear pathways between related roles
- Identifying transferable skills across functions
- Enabling quick responses to changing business needs
- Supporting internal talent marketplace initiatives
6 Steps to Optimize Your Job Architecture Framework
Modernizing your job architecture is a significant undertaking that requires careful planning and execution.
While every organization's journey will be unique, following these proven steps will help you create a framework that's both effective today and adaptable to meet your future workforce needs.
Step 1: Assess Your Current Framework
Begin by thoroughly evaluating your existing job architecture. Understand what's working, what isn't, and where gaps exist. Look for signs that your current workforce structure needs updating.
- Title and Pay Disparities
Different titles and compensation for similar roles across departments - Classification Conflicts
Frequent disagreements about where roles fit in the organization - External Hiring Dependency
Limited internal mobility resulting in overreliance on external senior hires - Outdated Job Descriptions
Job descriptions that don't reflect current work requirements - Career Path Confusion
Inconsistent information about growth opportunities across the organization - Fragmented Data
Multiple versions of job information across HR systems
Document these challenges and their business impact. Are you losing talent due to unclear growth paths? Are hiring managers struggling to define new roles? Is pay inequity creating retention risks?
Understanding these connections helps build a clear case for change and ensures your optimization efforts address real organizational needs.
Step 2: Define Your Optimization Strategy
When optimizing a job architecture framework, organizations can take two distinct approaches, says Korn Ferry’s Benjamin Frost, Senior Client Partner.
“One approach is you start from the top-down,” notes Frost. “Like designing a house, you start with your architectural drawing.” This means creating a matrix that maps:
- What functions exist in your organization (finance, IT, HR), and how they break down (like separating tax specialists from auditors in finance)
- How many levels of work you need (like associates to partners in consulting)
- How roles differ within each function (how an HR business partner differs from a training or compensation partner, for example)
“The other approach is bottom-up,” Frost explains, “where you start with your current roles and map them to established frameworks.”
This approach leverages existing role profiles and taxonomies—like Korn Ferry's library of more than 10,000 Success Profiles—to bring structure and consistency to your current framework.
Your assessment findings from Step 1 will help determine which strategy fits better.
Organizations entering new markets or needing fundamental restructuring might benefit from the top-down approach, while those looking to improve existing structures might find the bottom-up approach more effective.
Many organizations, Frost notes, use a combination of both approaches.
Step 3: Align Stakeholders
A job architecture transformation affects everyone from HR to line managers to employees.
This makes stakeholder alignment crucial for success. “The big opportunity is for organizations to create a single source of truth about roles and their purpose,” explains Frost.
The absence of this shared understanding has significant consequences. “You could have four different people in the company reinventing the wheel,” Frost points out.
“A recruiter writes one job description. A manager creates different performance objectives. Reward teams make separate valuations. And learning specialists develop distinct skill requirements.
“This not only creates inefficiency but also leads to a poor employee experience,” Frost adds.
To address these challenges and ensure successful implementation, begin with clear actions for each stakeholder group.
- Help HR teams understand how to use the framework consistently
- Show managers how to use it for development discussions
- Explain to employees how it affects their career opportunities
- Demonstrate to leaders how it supports business goals
Create training materials and guides that help stakeholders understand not just what's changing, but why it matters to them and how it will make their work more effective.
Step 4: Create an Implementation Road Map
You need a clear plan to bring your framework to life. A well-structured implementation road map helps you manage the complexity of this change.
Start by establishing your technology foundation. Your Human Capital Management (HCM) system needs to be ready to support the new framework. This means ensuring your systems can handle:
- Consistent job classifications across departments
- Clear relationships between roles and levels
- Updated compensation structures
- Career path visualization
Connecting Your Job Architecture to Your HCM
Your job architecture needs the right technological foundation to succeed.
Whether you're using Workday, SuccessFactors, or any other leading HCM platforms, Korn Ferry Architect integrates seamlessly with your existing systems.
Why does this matter? It helps you define a common language and ensures that your job architecture data flows smoothly across your entire HR technology ecosystem.
For the next stage, break down the implementation into manageable phases:
- Start with a pilot group to test and refine your approach
- Define clear milestones for each phase
- Set realistic timelines for rollout
- Establish success indicators for each phase
Finally, your implementation plan should clearly outline technical requirements and key deliverables while identifying potential risks and mitigation strategies.
Step 5: Execute the Plan
It's time to implement your framework. As you begin executing:
- Have managers test new role classifications with their teams
- Get HR teams to practice using the new framework for hiring and promotions
- Have compensation teams validate new pay structures
- Engage employees in exploring their potential career paths
Move systematically through your planned phases, maintaining clear communication throughout. Document what works and what needs adjustment—from role classification challenges to feedback from managers and employees.
Step 6: Measure Success
To achieve success in job architecture, measure and monitor your framework to make sure it continues to deliver value.
“Without a modern architecture that meets future workforce needs, you're likely inflating your investment in talent by at least 2-5% or wrongly allocating it,” explains Korn Ferry’s Harm van Vijfeyken, Senior Client Partner. This makes measuring impact crucial.
Key metrics to track include:
Business Impact
- Time-to-hire for key positions
- Retention rates
- Pay equity across similar roles
People Impact
- Employee engagement scores
- Internal mobility rates
- Manager satisfaction with career development tools
Process Efficiency
- Job architecture utilization across HR processes
Beyond these metrics, look for qualitative indicators in your people's experiences.
- Are employees finding it easier to understand their career options?
- Are managers having better conversations about development?
- Is HR spending less time resolving job classification issues?
These indicators show whether your framework is truly serving its purpose as a foundation for talent decisions.
Adapt Your Job Architecture for the Future of Work—Today
Remember that your framework shouldn't be set in stone.
The most successful organizations treat their job architecture as a living system, regularly updating it to reflect new skills, emerging roles, and evolving business needs.
“This is not a one-time exercise. Expect that you will have to keep it updated, especially over the next few years as skills continue to change and emerge,” Vijfeyken adds.
Want help building or adapting your job architecture framework to meet future workforce needs?
Want to Chat?
Get in Touch with a Korn Ferry Work & Career Architecture Expert
Our Experts
Changes Starts with a Conversation
Complete the form, and a Korn Ferry expert will be in touch to discuss how we can help your business achieve its goals.
FAQ for Pay Transparency
Some regions and countries have enacted laws mandating pay transparency. For example, the EU Pay Transparency Directive requires employers to disclose pay information and address wage gaps, which must be integrated into national laws by 2026. In the U.S., certain states, including California, Colorado, and New York have passed legislation requiring salary ranges to be shared in job postings. These laws aim to promote pay equity, but regulations vary widely by region.
Pay transparency helps address wage disparities by promoting objective, data-driven compensation practices. When salary ranges and pay decisions are made public, it reduces the likelihood of biases—such as those based on gender or race—impacting compensation. Transparency ensures accountability, as employers must justify pay differences based on performance, skills, and experience, rather than subjective factors. Over time, this leads to more equitable pay structures and helps close the pay gap.
Yes, pay transparency can significantly reduce turnover by fostering trust, fairness, and openness within an organization. When employees understand how their compensation is determined and feel that it is fair compared to their peers, they are less likely to feel undervalued or seek employment elsewhere. Transparency around pay also promotes employee engagement and retention by creating a culture of accountability and ensuring that pay aligns with performance and contributions.
