IDS HR Study 814, January 2006

Job families

• Looks in detail at how jobs are divided into broad occupational or functional groups to form a job family structure, the typical number of levels or ‘grades’ within a family and how these are defined
• Highlights how job families can provide more transparent career paths as well as greater flexibility to accommodate market pay
• Discusses the key design considerations, including how jobs are matched across to a new job family structure
• Includes six detailed case studies of companies that operate job families and career frameworks.

A growing number of companies are recognising the potential benefits of taking a job family approach when designing new pay and grading structures. A well-designed job family framework establishes clear career paths for employees, showing at a glance the potential for both promotion and lateral progression. Organisations can also take advantage of this method of arranging roles to align their pay levels more closely with the market.

What are job families?

A job family structure, also often referred to as a career framework, is a type of grading system that divides jobs into coherent groups or clusters on the basis of shared characteristics. Generally, job families either cover functional groups or reflect broader occupational or work-based similarities between a set of jobs.

Accommodating market pay

By arranging roles into job families, employers have greater flexibility to vary the pay for particular groups of jobs according to the market. However, some organisations believe that aligning their job families against a single salary scale – where the pay bands for jobs at the same level are the same across every family – offers greater transparency in terms of equal pay for work of equal value.

Clarifying career paths

The generic profiles used to define the requirements for a role at each level of a job family set out clearly the skills and behaviours staff must acquire to achieve promotion. Moreover, employees also have a better understanding of how their jobs fit within the organisation as a whole and, as a result, can fully appreciate the opportunities available to broaden their skills through lateral progression.

A fulcrum for HR activities

Job family structures or career frameworks are often introduced to provide consistency in grading and pay arrangements following a merger or a period of rapid growth. But they can reach beyond this to offer a platform for integrating a whole host of related HR activities, such as recruitment, performance management and career development.

Featured case studies

This publication includes detailed case studies looking at how job families work at: Canon UK, Norwich Union Central Services, Xansa UK, University of Southampton, Zarlink Semiconductor and FedEx.