3 Benefits of Utilizing a Dynamic Job Architecture

Job architecture solutions enable an organization to build an inventory of their jobs, where they sit within the organization, and the key skills or competencies needed to be successful in each role. While the former version of a job architecture – which often existed in a spreadsheet – quickly became outdated as the organization evolved, dynamic job architectures are designed with an agile approach. With little upkeep, they change and evolve as rapidly as the business evolves. 

Dynamic job architectures are just emerging in the HR tech space and bring with them a myriad of benefits over their predecessor:  

• Flexibility and adaptability to changing business needs. You can easily ensure your job architecture reflects the current state of the organization and use it to drive decisions and next steps. 
• Accurate and up-to-date representation of job roles and responsibilities. There is no last-minute panic and cleanup to produce meaningful data; the system is living and breathing, so when you need information, it’s ready and accurate. 
• Improved transparency and communication within the organization. Dynamic job architectures drive transparent conversations about organizational and personal growth and development, removing bias and personal opinion and allowing leaders to focus on skills and competencies. 

Let’s discuss how transitioning to a dynamic job architecture can assist you in managing complexity, ensuring fairness and equity, and facilitating growth and change.  

Managing Complexity 

In large organizations, managing the complexity that surrounds your job structure is vital for managing daily operations. A dynamic job architecture helps simplify this process, eliminating manual data entry and tracking by automating any updates that are needed. 

With a dynamic job architecture, you gain access to existing taxonomies and frameworks for thousands of roles. This gives you the opportunity to leverage existing datasets, which means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There is no need to draft taxonomies from scratch, build them out, and then manage and update them manually as things change. This automation improves both efficiency and accuracy, preventing errors and freeing up time to focus on growth and strategy. 

Large, complex organizations who aren’t leveraging dynamic job architecture often share that while titles and roles may be similar across departments, locations, and supervisors, job descriptions and expectations vary because of inconsistency. This creates confusion for transferring and promoting employees and makes it challenging for the organization to forecast potential promotions based on skills. Dynamic job architecture can streamline roles and skills across all departments, resolving this common pain point.  

One healthcare organization with more than 10,000 employees noticed that registered nurses alone were working under over 200 different titles, leading to inconsistent screening procedures, rating procedures, and merit increase procedures. By implementing a dynamic job architecture, they were able to reduce the number of unique RN titles to around 50 and streamline skills, screening questions, and evaluation criteria across the organization. 

Ensuring Fairness and Equity 

Ensuring fairness and equity in the workplace is a crucial aspect of a successful organization. One way to achieve this is by implementing a dynamic job architecture structure. This structure can help ensure that all employees are treated fairly and equitably in terms of career opportunities and internal moves. Automation can also play a crucial role in eliminating bias in decision making. By utilizing an employee’s proficiency and competency levels, as well as their skill requirements, companies can ensure that promotions and opportunities are based on a uniform expectation for all employees. This allows for a more equitable and fair workplace, where employees are recognized and rewarded based on their abilities and skills, rather than any biases or subjective factors. 

Implementing dynamic job architecture creates a prescriptive and structured methodology for assessing the skills and competencies required for a given role. Leaders can then clearly identify which employees have those skills today, which employees are developing those skills, and which employees do not have those skills.  

Dynamic job architecture is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to equity:  

• It ensures fairness and equity in decision-making regarding career opportunities and internal moves by shifting to skills-based and data-driven decisions, disabling unconscious bias among hiring managers.  
• It standardizes the expectation for each role to ensure each employee in a given role is held to the same standard, promoting fairness and equity.  
• It promotes fairness in promotion and opportunities by standardizing proficiency/competency level and skill requirements, ensuring all employees are measured consistently or ‘using the same ruler.’ 

Facilitating Growth and Change 

Dynamic job architectures change the way organizations scale up in a multitude of ways. First, they provide a roadmap for growth, outlining which skills and roles are needed to accommodate new work (and where). Second, they help provide insight into who may be qualified for those roles in the existing workforce and what gaps may exist that should be bridged prior to movement. Finally, a dynamic job architecture automates the process of facilitating the creation of new roles and the allocation of responsibilities as the organization expands. 

For examples, if an organization with thousands of employees was interested in scaling up their organization through the addition of a new business line. Implementing a dynamic job architecture could help them understand which additional roles and skills would be needed, who in their current organization had the potential to fill them, what skills they would seek out in their new hires, and which interview questions to ask. 

Conclusion 

Dynamic job architecture has become an indispensable tool for organizations in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. It is no longer just a luxury for large organizations, but a necessity for ensuring the effective functioning, planning for growth, and maintaining fair and equitable practices. Dynamic job architecture provides organizations with a comprehensive overview of their workforce, allowing them to align their workforce with their strategic goals and create a more agile and adaptive workforce. 

Dynamic job architecture provides numerous benefits to organizations looking to improve their workforce and overall business operations. Whether your organization is seeking consistency, automation, equity, or scalability, dynamic job architecture has you covered. As we move further into 2023, it’s essential for organizations to invest in this valuable tool and unlock its full potential.