Aligning Job Architecture and Market Data for Compensation Success

When you’re completing a puzzle, it still takes time and effort to make the final picture, even though you start with all of the pieces. Sometimes you have to shuffle pieces around to find the perfect fit or you make progress in one area more than another—building a compensation program that fits your organization’s needs is no different. In our recent webinar, Aligning Job Architecture and Market Data for Compensation Success, I was joined by Deloitte’s Sheila Sever and Empsight’s Jeremy Feinstein to discuss how job architecture and market data fit together to help create a strong, competitive compensation program.

Building a Solid Job Architecture

Compensation is an undeniable pillar of talent management, and solidifying your job architecture can help ensure your team is appropriately positioned within a hierarchy, compensated for the correct level of work they’re completing, and  provides a consistency that simplifies compensation benchmarking. 

Deloitte provides a maturity model for clients to evaluate the current status of their job architecture, and we had a great discussion on why job architecture is so imperative to compensation programs. No matter where you fall on the maturity model, job architecture isn’t a stagnant un-changing part of your program. In fact, every time you hire someone new or adjust an existing employee’s title, your job architecture probably needs another look.

Recognizing that job architecture is a bit of a moving target can feel intimidating, but its smaller subtasks like job leveling will help: 

• Improve pay equity and reduce internal compression
• Enhance career progression visibility for employees
• Support total rewards strategy across regions/functions
• Make it easier to scale talent programs like incentive pay, LTI eligibility, or internal mobility

One very special part of our webinar you’ll want to rewatch is Sheila and Jeremy’s overview of Deloitte and Empsight’s Global Job Architecture Practices Survey results. This survey allows participants to weigh in on the status of their current job architecture, offer insights on how job architecture is impacting compensation practice, and evaluate how their current model may need to be adjusted. During the webinar, we were lucky to have Sheila and Jeremy share some key insights from the survey, and if you participate in the survey now, you can get the full 2025 results. 

Finding a Market Data Fit

I lead a team that’s focused on making market pricing better, but we recognize that getting started with salary benchmarking isn’t a small endeavor. For teams that may be searching for ways to introduce survey data or who are aiming to make sure their survey data is in lockstep with their job architecture, our panelists shared a few common struggles and how to help ease the transition:

Progressing in Your Job Architecture Journey

Once you’ve gotten a jump on job architecture, the fun doesn’t stop! Progressing through the maturity model is not a simple checklist—it might get messy and it’s a unique journey for every organization. Recognizing your starting point empowers you to identify the different steps you could take to move your job architecture toward maturity.

Our panelists offered a few points of advice for moving your journey forward, no matter your starting point:

Whether you’re just beginning your job architecture journey or you’re well established with a wealth of survey data, making sure these two elements are aligned is a sure-fire way to keep your compensation program competitive and successful. We can guarantee that there will continue to be changes to the job market, economy, and compensation benchmarks, but a well-defined program allows you to make adjustments as they come up rather than starting from scratch every time.