Client
A global specialist market insurer, employing over 2000 employees in 20 different countries.
Solution
- Reviewed existing job architecture system.
- Created a bespoke levelling framework and evaluated all roles.
- Benchmarked all roles against market data.
Challenge
- Client had grown both organically and by acquisition and had differing organisational hierarchies and structures, leading to inconsistent grading/levelling and reward. They had a job architecture process and system which had been degraded over a number of years which no one had confidence in. The organisation needed to demonstrate they had a clear, fair and transparent structure as part of governance but did not have the opportunity to implement new systems. They were due to be acquired by US owner who already had a plan to implement a global job evaluation system in the next 18 months to 2 years.
Impact
- An initial evaluation of existing Job Evaluation processes and systems to understand what was and wasn't working and why, hence our detailed report with recommendations on a RAG status for Risks and Improvements.
- Implemented improvements utilising the existing technology and linked into existing pay data to ensure all roles were matched by level, function and discipline to benchmark pay and total reward.
- Outcome was client confidence in their job evaluation and reward decisions made on the back of it.
Context
The client was a global specialist market insurer, employing over 2000 employees in 20 different countries. The organisation had grown both organically and by acquisition and had a number of differing organisational hierarchies and structures. With a keen focus on fairness and transparency, the organisation requested that Reward Heads support them in understanding, analysing and redesigning their job architecture. The two phases of the project focused on discovery of the existing different structures and methodologies and then a redesign and re-evaluation phase.
The client further decided that Reward Heads could add additional value by linking into their existing pay benchmarking data and ensuring all roles were matched by level, function and discipline.
The Problem
- The client had grown both organically and by acquisition and had differing organisational hierarchies and structures, leading to inconsistent grading/levelling and reward. They had a job architecture process and system which had been degraded over a number of years which no one had confidence in. The organisation needed to demonstrate they had a clear, fair and transparent structure as part of governance but did not have the opportunity to implement new systems.
Which meant:
- There was a significant risk of inequality with same or similar jobs in different areas of the organisation being rewarded differently./li>
- There was little understanding of overall reward costs based on little or no real consistency.
- Leadership and managers were frustrated by lack of consistency and understanding of the reward structure or framework.
- Whilst there was a central database of information for job roles, job titles, job evaluations, job matches and reward benchmarking, there was no confidence in the validity of the information held.
The Tension
HR wanted a verified methodology, process and system to record accurately and consistently job evaluation and link this to reward benchmarking.
Finance needed consistency and transparency for better budget planning.
Leaders had no confidence in the current reward framework based on the job architecture and needed transparency and reassurance.
What Reward Heads did
- Diagnosed areas for improvement via a full evaluation of their job architecture methodology, process, ownership and system, made recommendations on next steps for overall improvement and focus on future growth of the business.
- Designed job architecture principles and a governance framework along with a process guide and training materials to enable the wider team and the business managers to understand more about job architecture.
- Implemented a bespoke levelling framework for consistency across a highly complex business.
- Evaluated all roles and audited the full Job Architecture IT system to ensure all data held was correct and had clear ownership and governance for the future.
- Aligned all roles to market data for pay review through evaluating all roles against a bespoke levelling framework and referencing this to function and discipline in the preferred benchmark data source.
Business Impact
- The business now had complete confidence in the job evaluation for all roles in terms of consistency and had it all recorded accurately ready for engagement with the US owner to go into a consolidated global system.
- The business was able to justify reward based on a levelling framework for fairness and consistency.
People Impact
- Leaders and Senior Managers had confidence in the consistency and fairness of job evaluation and the information held in the job architecture system.
- Employees pay was more closely aligned to market using benchmark data.
Which resulted in …
Which means leadership now have confidence in a fair and objective job evaluation/architecture system.
The HR team are confident in the job evaluation and benchmark data meaning that reward is more competitive in the market.
If this feels familiar …
Job Architecture or job evaluation is often a critically important step for organisations to focus on fairness, consistency and be able to pay people without the risk of inequity. It also provides the building blocks for a reward framework informed by market data.
