Even the best-designed job architecture can drift out of sync with how a business operates. Unlike a sudden crisis, this drift happens quietly as everyday decisions and quick fixes gradually move the organisation away from its original intent. Roles evolve, new markets emerge, and expectations shift, yet the underlying structure remains the same. Over time, what was meant to enable clarity, and fairness can start to limit agility and alignment.

The Foundation That Holds It All Together

The Job Architecture Model is one of the most important backbone structures in any company. It connects jobs and people with business strategy and forms the basis for people decisions on reward, development, and workforce planning. But that connection only works when the model is designed, maintained, and applied with a clear intent and purpose.

In our experience, misalignment rarely happens because the model itself was wrong. It happens because it is difficult to implement, govern, and sustain. Because of that, many organizations struggle to explain to managers why the model exists, how to use it, and what their mandate is. Without this understanding, it is difficult to expect accountability from managers. When the model is not designed to evolve with the business, HR is often left to treat symptoms instead of addressing the underlying issues that prevent the model from working as intended.

These challenges typically fall into four areas that signal it’s time for a Job Architecture health check.

1. Design Flaws: Built for a Moment in Time

Many Job Architecture models are created to address a specific HR issue such as setting up a career framework, defining pay levels, or harmonising titles. While these solutions meet an immediate need, they are often not developed into a complete or sustainable architecture with a clear long-term purpose that can work as an operating model for people processes. The result is a model that lacks flexibility, depth, and coherence.

A strong design must define not only what the model is, but also how it operates and how it evolves. Governance, operational integration, business alignment, and continuous development need to be part of the foundation. Without this, even a well-intentioned model can quickly become misaligned and unable to support change in the business, leadership decisions, and evolving work practices.

2. Drift from Business Reality: When Structure Stops Reflecting Work

As organisations evolve, the gap between how work is structured on paper and how it happens widens. This drift rarely occurs overnight; it is the accumulation of incremental decisions, exceptions, and workarounds. Over time, these small shifts pull the organisation away from its original design intent. The framework that once supported clarity and consistency starts to create friction, limiting responsiveness, creating overlaps, and eroding confidence in the system.

3. Weak Governance: Lack of Ownership and Accountability

Misalignment often is not caused by a flawed model, but by how it is implemented and maintained. Governance and accountability are frequently unclear: managers may not understand why the model exists, how to apply it, or what their role is in sustaining it. Without this shared understanding, HR is left to manage symptoms such as inconsistent job levels, unclear titles, and pay misalignments, rather than addressing the underlying issues that prevent the model from functioning as intended. A healthy Job Architecture requires ongoing stewardship, communication, and a clear mandate to operate.

4. Lost Strategic Connection: When the Model Loses Purpose

At its best, Job Architecture connects people and roles with business strategy. It provides the backbone for decisions on reward, development, and workforce planning. But that connection only works when the model is intentionally maintained and applied with purpose. When it loses its link to strategy or pay philosophy, it becomes static and transactional. The structure that once supported talent and growth can start to constrain it, eroding trust, internal equity, and strategic alignment.

Bringing the Architecture Back into Balance

A Job Architecture health check provides a structured yet pragmatic way to assess how well your current model supports business needs and HR processes. By examining key dimensions such as design, governance, strategic alignment, and operational integration, HR can diagnose where the structure has become misaligned and define clear priorities for improvement.

Our approach focuses on six key dimensions that together define the maturity and effectiveness of your Job Architecture:

• Foundations: This includes the purpose of the Job Architecture, the principles that guide decisions and its connection to the overall business strategy. These elements create stability, direction and intent. Without them, the model becomes difficult to maintain and develop over time.

• Structure: These are the basic building blocks such as levels, job families and career streams. They define how work is grouped and scaled across the organisation. If these elements are unclear or inconsistent, you quickly see job title inflation, internal fairness issues and difficulty comparing roles across countries and business units.

• Design Integrity: This is where the rules for consistency sit. It includes levelling criteria, progression logic, job evaluation standards and the governance model. Governance is essential here, because it sets responsibility, decision rights and defines how exceptions are handled. Without clear design rules and governance, drift becomes inevitable.

• Operational Integration: This focuses on how well the Job Architecture is embedded into day to day people processes. Hiring, job design, reward cycles, performance management, promotions and workforce planning all rely on a stable Job Architecture. Even a well-designed model will fail to drive real value if it is not applied consistently in operations.

• Strategic Enablement: This looks at how the Job Architecture supports business priorities. For example, does it enable future capabilities, support organisational design, scale with growth or allow consistent decision making across countries? A strong Job Architecture supports strategy rather than operating in parallel to it.

• People & Communication: This includes transparency, manager understanding and the employee experience. Even the best-designed structure fails if leaders do not understand it or employees do not experience it as fair and clear. Culture and communication are a major part of making the model work.

By assessing these 6 dimensions, HR can move beyond symptom-fixing and instead re-establish clarity, accountability, and strategic alignment.

So the question is not whether Job Architecture matters; it clearly does. The real question is whether yours is designed, governed, and operated in a way that continues to deliver on its promise.

Below is a brief overview of our approach to a Job Architecture Assessment.

Our process is built on experience and is intuitive, flexible, and straightforward, ensuring that the assessment creates real insight and practical outcomes.

The assessment process takes place in four steps:

1.      Review of your current Job Architecture model

Start by assessing the design, structure, and documentation of your existing framework. Include perspectives from key stakeholders through a structured self-assessment (this is where our six key dimensions come into play) and interviews to ensure you have a complete understanding of how your Job Architecture currently operates in practice.

2.      Joint discussion of key insights

Bring the findings together to identify strengths, gaps, and emerging themes. Use this discussion to surface potential risks and opportunities that may not be immediately visible in the data alone.

3.      Maturity report and recommendations

Develop a concise overview of your current state and maturity level. From there, define targeted priorities and actions that will strengthen the consistency, transparency, and usability of your Job Architecture.

4.      Roadmap for future improvement

Translate your priorities into a clear, practical roadmap. Include concrete actions, timelines, and ownership to guide implementation and ensure sustained progress over time.

The outcome is a shared understanding of where your organisation stands today and a clear path forward. You will have the insight and tools to build your business case and engage key stakeholders with confidence.

Reach out if you would like to explore how we can help assess your current Job Architecture and identify where it can be enhanced to better support your strategy, your people, and your growth.