How Companies Get Job Architecture Wrong

While job architecture has historically been more common in large organisations, that’s all about to change as new EU Pay Transparency Legislation means smaller companies with a few hundred employees will need to implement job architecture. 

This means using data to categorise jobs across the company based on objective factors like skill level, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. This will enable your organisation to produce accurate pay gap reports and make pay decisions consistently.

Since HR teams only sporadically set up a job architecture framework, they often fall victim to pitfalls that delay the project or stop it from getting off the ground. So what common errors should you look out for before building your job framework? 

Based on dozens of conversations we held with HR leaders, these are the most common ways job architecture projects go off-track.

1. Failing to Secure CEO Support

TL:DR: leadership endorsement is crucial for embedding job architecture into your company’s culture, ensuring that it’s seen as a strategic tool rather than an HR exercise. Job architecture helps align HR with broader business strategy by facilitating analytics for workforce planning, salary expense forecasting, and talent management. Making it a long-term asset, not just a compliance solution. 

HR leaders often struggle to get executive support for a job architecture project. Typically, the need for this work is framed as a ‘compliance requirement’ in preparation for the EU Directive. While this is true and important, presenting it solely as a compliance project can make the HR leader appear bureaucratic, rather than a contributor to the business’s success.

In reality, job architecture is a valuable tool that supports broader business goals. Before a job architecture project, each job is often considered to be unique, resulting in organisations with as many roles as they have people. This makes it difficult for executives to forecast salary costs, anticipate future skills needs, or manage succession planning. 

A clear job architecture matches similar jobs to a smaller number of roles and clarifies the responsibilities, skills and experience associated with each role. By showing how roles and their requirements relate to one another, companies can create and communicate career progression opportunities, a key factor in employee retention. Additionally, it provides greater structure around promotions and associated pay decisions, ensuring pay equity, which contributes to a fairer and more engaged workforce.

The key to gaining executive support is to position job architecture as a critical enabler of business value, rather than a compliance need

2. Taking Too Long to Execute the Project

TL:DR: deliver efficiently by selecting a simple, right-sized methodology for your firm and applying it objectively with the assistance of technology. 

Job architecture projects can often drag on for anything from several months to a full year. But this doesn’t have to be the case—especially for small or mid-sized firms. A streamlined job architecture project should take no more than 90 days to complete. But  four common delay factors often slow these projects down:

• Not having a clear idea of the roles in your business: up-to-date, consistently structured job descriptions are a prerequisite for this kind of work. It’s a good idea to start updating your job descriptions early to ensure you have the right information for each role so you can quickly and effectively evaluate roles.

• Overcomplicating the process: the job evaluation process, also known as job grading, is used to categorise the roles that will sit within your framework. Some companies get bogged down in overly complex, point-based systems often recommended by large consulting firms. While these systems have their merits, they can be overkill for many organisations. For most companies, a simpler job classification method is more effective. This involves grouping jobs into families based on similar tasks and responsibilities, then levelling them—usually into around seven levels. The key is to keep the process objective and aligned with the factors outlined in the EU Directive: skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

• Allowing subjectivity to creep in: one frequent issue is mixing up the evaluation of the job with the performance of the person in that role. It’s crucial to keep these separate to maintain objectivity and fairness. 

• Relying on manual processes: many companies fail to leverage technology in the job grading process. Once job families and levels are clearly defined, machine learning and AI tools can help by analysing job descriptions and providing an initial grouping. The HR team can then review these groupings, saving time and reducing the manual workload. Leveraging technology is not just a shortcut—it’s essential for scalability and accuracy, especially in small to mid-sized firms where manual processes would be too slow and prone to error.

3. Failure to Effectively Manage Stakeholder Input 

TL:DR: it’s vital to involve stakeholders in a structured way so they’re clear on what’s required from them.

After initial job grading, many companies fall into the trap of a lengthy, free-form consultation process with business stakeholders. While it's essential to involve key stakeholders at key points, the consultation needs to be managed efficiently. Use technology to streamline communication and keep workflows organised to avoid unnecessary delays. This will also keep stakeholders engaged so they can support organisational change and the new job framework as it goes live.

4. Not Planning for Future Use

TL:DR: job architecture is not a one-and-done project—it requires continuous improvement to remain relevant and effective as the business evolves. As a result, regular audits and updates are critical to its success. Before you begin the project, think about how you’ll use it on an ongoing basis and how you’ll update it as the jobs inventory and employee roles change.

A common oversight is being so focused on setting up the job architecture that you fail to think about how it will be used and maintained in the long term. It’s crucial to have processes in place to update the job inventory regularly so that the system reflects new and changed roles and omits roles that no longer exist. This will ensure your framework remains a useful analytical tool that reflects the reality of the roles in your organisation.

Managers also need access to the job architecture to understand where new roles fit and the appropriate salary ranges. If standardised salary bands are used, they need to be updated regularly by benchmarking against external compensation data, like market surveys and salary reports. The good news is that your job architecture will make it easy to compare your internal roles with external market data.

Conclusion: Focus on Simplicity, Efficiency, and Long-Term Value

Job architecture is more than a compliance measure—it’s a foundation for strategic HR and business decision-making. By securing executive buy-in, avoiding unnecessary complexity, automating manual processes, and planning for future use cases, companies can implement a job architecture that supports pay transparency and broader organisational goals.

With smart planning and execution, firms can complete their job architecture projects within 90 days, positioning themselves for success in the era of pay transparency.

At Purepay, we provide the expertise and technology to help you overcome all these challenges as you prepare for pay transparency. Job architecture development is the first task we tackle as it lays the foundations for everything else you need to achieve your pay transparency goals.  

Download our free pay transparency checklist to help you prepare for the whole journey.