How Unique Is Your Job Title?

We recently conducted a review of job titles for those in workforce analytics and planning roles and found that there are a staggering 351 unique job titles across 430 individuals evaluated. While some of these distinctions are driven by career level or scope of responsibility, no one would recommend so many job titles for this niche discipline or likely most other areas.

Think about just a few of the many challenges this pattern creates when compiling data to draw insights with job titling information:

We are so often either constrained by or compelled to create broader proxies for jobs in organizations to enable analytical endeavors. Yet, we create just as many job titles for our own work as other functions within our organizations!

What’s in a name?

Some might argue that these job title distinctions represent meaningful differences in the work that we do and our relative level of responsibility within our organizations. That said, is the job titling framework that we’ve created scalable as our own function evolves? Does the framework align to how other groups with similar skills and responsibilities define their jobs? And, fundamentally, how do we balance the need for specificity in skillsets and the value of combining “like” groups for analytical purposes?

Today, we are truly fortunate to have advanced in our understanding of how data and technology come together to support evidence-based decision-making in many disciplines, including HR. We have the opportunity, or perhaps even the responsibility, to leverage and model best practices in our own naming conventions to elicit better data (hopefully) from others.

Do we really need job titles at all?

At some level, we can justifiably distinguish our own job titles based on unique aspects of our technical and commercial knowledge, skills and abilities. Yet, these distinctions may then limit opportunities to aggregate information in a cohesive way across functions, geographies, business units and the like. The fundamental question is: To what extent do job titles represent needed nuance vs. data "noise", and should we have—or use—job titles at all?

While this question is somewhat provocative, it certainly warrants further discussion, given the number of organizations that struggle to consolidate and collapse job titles in a meaningful way. And, the solution does not necessarily require extensive review and calibration through a systematic job architecture model. Yes, job architecture is one way to clean up and document work activities (and corresponding competencies) within and across disciplines. However, this approach is too often constrained by what is known today and an antiquated library of pre-defined terms that are attempting to link to ever-changing job responsibilities.

Is there a better way?

With all the buzz around the "future of work" and the notion that relationships with organizations may be quite different than our historically-based view of jobs and traditional forms of employment, some might argue that job architecture itself will be subsumed by a new form of task or skills management in the future. When considering the need to capture meaningful differences in both the types of knowledge, skills and abilities and the level of proficiency within each, we can potentially leap frog the current reliance on jobs as a defining mechanism for unique combinations of these factors. These potential alternatives go by the motto: "If you can’t join them, beat them", leveraging alternative and generally more targeted approaches to managing labor-related activities—albeit not necessarily totally dissimilar to some job architecture underpinnings:

In essence, these models tend to create alternative mechanisms for aligning business needs with groups of individuals or skills in a way that allows for some form of prioritization—be it by magnitude, expertise, cost or degree of transformative impact. Depending on where business value is disproportionally delivered or risked, an organization can work to identify and manage some subset of overall capability, which may not be clearly defined by a specific job, without having to manage all jobs in a comparable, nuanced way.

Add to the discussion: How has your organization addressed job title proliferation and the need to capture key knowledge, skills and abilities that drive competitive advantage? If you want to learn more about our approach, please contact us at info@meritanalyticsgroup.com .