How a rock solid org sets you up for success: key takeaways

In our recent In the Room session, ELMO’s Chief People Officer Anne Tosky and Zest HR’s CEO Kat Thompson unpacked what job architecture actually is, why it matters more than most HR leaders realise, and where to start if yours hasn’t kept up.

Here are the key takeaways from the conversation.

What is job architecture, really?

Job architecture is the way your roles, titles, levels, pay structures and capabilities connect. As Kat put it, it comes down to three things: how work is organised, how people grow, and how decisions are made.

When those pieces are interconnected and clearly defined, they create a cohesive foundation for everything else in your HR function. When they’re not, which is common, they tend to exist as separate, disconnected frameworks that create more confusion than clarity.

Why it’s often the root cause of bigger problems

Job architecture isn’t usually the thing yelling at you the loudest. But when you trace recurring friction back to its source, it’s often the culprit.

Anne shared a real example: without standardised salary grading, every remuneration conversation becomes longer than it needs to be. “Every time we’re talking about the analysts, it’s like, wait a minute, that one’s paid more than that one, and that one’s called this, and what’s going on? It just gets really confusing.”

Kat reinforced this from her consulting work: “It’s often the more subtle cause of other issues, whether it’s lack of trust in a system, lack of trust in data, or more challenging to make decisions. It creates that extra tension because you don’t have it already locked and loaded.”

What rock solid actually looks like

A rock solid job architecture isn’t something leaders or employees should need to think about. It should be baked into everything.

As Anne described it: “One of the things for me with a rock solid, documented, systematised job architecture is that you don’t need to know the history. It’s baked in. You don’t need to know why we have this little role that sits in regional Victoria and is paid twice as much.”

Kat expanded on this with capability frameworks as an example. When your core capabilities are clearly defined and threaded through position descriptions, recruitment, onboarding, probation, performance and career development, “you never actually look at the framework again. It’s just defining everything else that you do.”

When it’s done well, leaders can make decisions without coming to HR for context. Self-service becomes possible because the structure supports it.

The six things that break when it’s not solid

The session surfaced specific consequences of shaky job architecture that go well beyond admin headaches:

• Pay transparency gaps. Without a clear, objective way to value roles relative to each other, pay equity conversations become subjective and hard to defend.
• Career pathways that don’t make sense. If it’s not clear how to get from one role to another, employees can’t navigate their development, and managers can’t have meaningful career conversations.
• Remuneration decisions that go off the rails. Anne described the end-of-year scenario most HR leaders know well: a leader ignoring the guardrails because “Sally’s a go-getter.” Without clear grading and structure, there’s nothing defensible to point to.
• Payroll and compliance risk. Inconsistent role structures create headaches for payroll teams trying to map roles correctly, especially in organisations that have grown through acquisition.
• AI and automation that can’t deliver. As Kat put it: “You can’t automate chaos. If we haven’t clearly defined our roles, our tasks, and what’s involved, we don’t know what we can really leverage AI for.”
• Data and reporting you can’t trust. Ambiguity in your architecture translates to ambiguity in your workforce data, undermining dashboards, board reporting and any attempt at predictive analytics.

The misconception holding HR teams back

Both Anne and Kat agreed that the biggest misconception about job architecture is that it’s administrative, transactional, and frankly, boring.

Kat challenged this directly: “Job architecture is your strategic enabler. If we change our mindset to see it as building a rock solid foundation that sets us up for success, it shifts the thinking from transactional and reactive to your core foundation.”

Anne agreed, noting that the real unlock is strategic conversation. “How beneficial is it as an HR professional to stop talking about ‘we’ve got four analysts and we call them all different things’ and instead say ‘I’ve reviewed our org design and I think we have opportunities based on the capabilities we have.’ Totally different strategic conversation.”

Do people know what capabilities are required in their roles?

If you’re wondering whether your organisation’s job architecture needs attention, Kat offered a simple self-assessment to take back to your team:

1. Do people know how jobs are valued here?
2. Do people know how roles are remunerated?
3. Do people know how to progress their careers here?
4. Do people know how their jobs are classified?

If your answer is no to any one of those, it gives you a sense that there’s work to do, and it points you to which framework to start on first.

From there, the advice was consistent: start where you feel the most pain, apply it across the organisation rather than picking a single team, and embed it into your existing programs and systems rather than building a framework that lives on a shelf.

As Anne summarised: “Pick a framework and start there. Start with the most impactful. And if you can systematise it, bake it into your HR system so it feeds everything, rather than a PowerPoint you need to drag out and refresh.”

Watch the full session

You can watch the full recording of In the Room: How a Rock Solid Org Sets You Up for Success and access all session resources on our dedicated page.