Job Families: Aligning Jobs That Fit Together

Several factors contribute to offering fair and competitive pay, and work continues to improve processes, classifications and pay structures. Among top HR priorities for 2018 are reviewing and revising “job families”—phase 2 of a compensation project that began last year. 

Job families are groupings of levels within roles that have similar job duties/responsibilities and require comparable levels of knowledge, training and education. Grouping jobs into families provides a consistent structure for human resources to use when evaluating individual positions and assigning pay grades. Positions in a job family can range from entry level to management and require different levels of skill and responsibility, such as an administrative assistant I, II, III and IV. Job families can be used to: 

• Identify career development opportunities

• Facilitate career planning discussions and clarify the need for specific training

• Ensure consistency in how positions are classified and pay ranges are assigned

• Assess internal pay equity and external pay competitiveness

To date, 33 job family descriptions within the following groups have been drafted:

• Administrative Services
• Financial Services 
• Human Resources
• Laboratory
• Medical
• Research
• Communications and Marketing
• Crafts and Facilities
• Information Technology
• Library and Museum
• Student Services

Offer your review and feedback on these drafts by visiting the dedicated compensation project website at https://hr.tennessee.edu/pay/compensation-project-2018/. 

Focus group discussions at each campus and institute helped with better understanding the roles and levels within each job family. The focus groups provided essential feedback to ensure the new and revised roles within each family are an accurate description of work. The revisions will replace current job title descriptions when implemented in late 2018. The job family descriptions apply to staff positions and not to faculty, postdoctoral research associates or student positions.

More information will be shared soon, and questions can be directed to Julie Hunt, UT executive director of compensation, or to campus and institute human resources representatives listed below: 

 

 

Tags: Employee, Pay