Strategic HR in focus: Why it is time for employers to adopt work architecture model
Author: Laci Loew
More than ever before, workers search for purpose in the workplace, seek work that makes an impact, and expect internal talent mobility that utilises their unique strengths and capabilities, says XpertHR senior analyst, HR strategy and insights, Laci Loew.
When workers are purposefully engaged with meaningful work, individually and as a part of a team, they outperform their peers on several metrics.
These better metrics include having lower absenteeism, being less likely to leave, displaying higher productivity and having a greater impact within the organisation.
Matching purposeful work with individual talent
Workers are changing jobs at will to affiliate with employers that have figured out how to make work architecture the core of how work gets done. In other words, their employers knows how to match purposeful work with individual talents and unique skills where workers can feel and perform at their best.
Good practice: Developing performance
Surveys of workers and leaders suggest that:
- 41% said they would forgo a promotion if they could have more variety in their day-to-day work better aligned with their skills (OC Tanner Institute, 2019);
- 55% consider that the opportunity to use their skills and abilities in their work is very important (SHRM, 2017);
- 60% cite the importance of encouraging more cross-functional projects to improve the work experience (LinkedIn, 2020);
- 70% have contemplated side work to better align with their skills (WTW, 2022); and
- six of the top seven factors for deciding whether to quit a job relate to the employee work experience (CNBC, 2022).
Job hierarchies, job levelling and job requirements are at the core of these work issues. Forward-looking companies are reshaping their job architecture model to reflect a human-centric work architecture approach to optimising work.
While organisations are not likely to replace job architecture wholesale, a failure to complement job architecture with work architecture can put their business at risk.
Work architecture vs job architecture
"Work architecture" - sometimes referred to as "work without jobs" or the "flow-to-work" model - is a modern work experience that matches work to skills (not jobs to work), regardless of where within the organisation those skills are found.
The world of work is changing, purpose and social impact are becoming more important than ever, and employees are demanding more from their employers. It is time we reinvent the world of work as we know it. 'Work without Jobs' provides the radical framework needed to completely rethink the working models we use to ensure work works for everyone.
Leena Nair, global chief executive officer, CHANEL
"Job architecture" matches people to jobs and jobs to work. It is a traditional and basic construct oriented around the organisation's hierarchy of jobs. Job architecture encompasses several structural aspects, including:
- job functions;
- disciplines;
- titles;
- profiles;
- pay grades/ranges; and
- career paths.
Job architecture has served as a foundation for talent functions like workforce planning, recruiting, development, total reward and conventional vertical career progression. It focuses more on pinpointing and fixing workers' weaknesses than it does on identifying and leveraging their strengths and talents.
It is important to hire and position talent with foundational skills for roles that the organisation needs to fill (job architecture) but also to show intuition and aptitude for work optimisation and organisational agility as business needs shift (work architecture).
Those organisations willing to replace a single focus on jobs and job holders in favour of one that also matches work with skills will be at the forefront of building employee capacity to fuel business growth.
Advantages of each model
Rather than matching people to jobs and jobs to work, work architecture matches work with skills. The approach and advantages between the two models differ significantly:
| Job architecture | Work architecture |
| Workers are assigned to a standardised job with a defined set of tasks. | Workers are assigned to high-priority work outside an assigned job and matched to their unique skills for a portion of time and the remainder of time is invested in a job role. |
| Workers are inside a fixed organisational boundary usually by function. | Work assignments are boundaryless and include a democratised work ecosystem. |
| Workers are thought of as job holders with capability to fulfil job requirements. | Workers are thought of as a whole entity with unique skills. |
| Work and management are coordinated through a formal structure of hierarchy and static reporting relationships. | Work and management coordination is collaborative and cooperative, ebbing and flowing with the needs of the business and workers' skills. |
| Social values and work policies rely on traditional jobs. | Social values and work policies presume fluid working arrangements and work assignments. |
Time to try the work architecture model?
Work architecture provides the means to optimise work when the tenets of job architecture are not enough in today's ecosystem of evolving and transformational work priorities. Uncoupling work from jobs can seem overwhelming.
Good practice: HR change
However, your organisation can start to adopt work architecture by focusing on a single workstream or initiative that can serve as a pilot effort.
Use the pilot to build momentum around breaking down work into fractional components and realigning each fraction with skills to unleash organisational agility and unprecedented value and work purpose for workers.
