From 81 Job Descriptions to a Job Architecture

Client Overview

A global logistics and freight forwarding business operating across brokerage, international transportation, warehousing and corporate functions, with multiple business units.

The Challenge

The organisation had 81 job descriptions and no structure holding them together. Roles had been written at different times by different people, with no shared language for levels, no consistent view of what each role required, and no way to compare one role against another.

That made basic workforce decisions harder than they needed to be. There was no reliable basis for career pathing, no consistent input into recruitment, and no way to identify where the same capability requirement appeared across different parts of the business.

The Solution

Ben led the design of a complete people architecture for the organisation, working from the 81 existing job descriptions and structured consultation with the business.

The work delivered four connected layers:

• A job architecture organising every role into job families and levels, giving the business one consistent structure to plan against.
• A core capability framework describing the durable human capabilities expected of everyone, regardless of role.
• A leadership capability framework defining what leadership looks like at each level of the organisation.
• A competency framework spanning 15 competency domains, resolving into 81 role-specific competency models covering the technical requirements of each job.

The frameworks are being rolled out to business units for review one at a time, with each round of feedback incorporated and documented through a versioned change log.

Results (In Progress)

• Delivered a single job architecture covering all 81 roles.
• Established consistent capability and competency language across the organisation for the first time.
• Built 81 role competency models from a standing framework, so future roles can be modelled without starting again.