Job Architecture FAQs

The Boldy Elon strategic plan runs until 2030. Elon’s goal is to be within the top third of our peers through advancing salaries and benefits by the end of the plan, and the staff compensation analysis is designed to help move us toward our goal. Phase one included individuals earning $75,000 or less. We will have a more thorough understanding of how the peer adjustments contribute to this progress after the three phases are complete and adjustments have been considered across the full staff at Elon.

In addition, the Navigate Your Career Project helps support the objective – Support faculty and staff development across career stages and professional ranks with new leadership and learning pathways, and greater access to feedback, coaching and mentoring.

Developing and maintaining a strong job architecture system supports pay equity across the university, ensuring that employees in similar positions receive similar pay while establishing consistent compensation practices. A job architecture system also helps employees understand how pay decisions are made, how their positions support the operations and mission of the university, and how they can continue to advance their careers. This also enables employees to understand and plan their own career growth.

Supervisor trainings have been held regarding the recent compensation adjustments and will continue to be held on a recurring basis as we continue to rollout and implement the job architecture.

Flexible work is not within the scope of this project and is not being reviewed in combination with compensation.

Employees will be encouraged to have conversations with their supervisor regarding career growth opportunities, however, this does not guarantee that an individual will be considered for a higher-level position. Employees seeking promotional opportunities will still need to apply to externally posted vacant positions as part of a competitive search process and will need to meet the established criteria for the position to be considered for a promotional opportunity.

A variety of stakeholders from across the institution have provided feedback to both Mercer and Elon HR throughout the process. Individual employee feedback was not solicited to implement the job architecture.

The job architecture is designed so that employees can see opportunities across the university that may align with their career aspirations. Career growth may just not be linear within a single division but may also be lateral across other divisions allowing for continued growth at the University.

No. The project is focused on staff positions and student employees will not be part of the analysis.

Position descriptions are important tools that provide several benefits to employees, supervisors and the university as a whole. Position descriptions provide a clear understanding of performance expectations and detail how each job contributes to the university’s overall mission. Position descriptions also help ensure that employees are being properly compensated for their work. For supervisors, position descriptions assist with the assessment of employee performance, help guide employee development based on position responsibilities and assist with the communication of position expectations.

Position descriptions will allow the university to document the current set of jobs on campus (the job catalog) and identify work that is common across different departments, as well as unique responsibilities that apply to specific work groups. Position descriptions have been utilized and continue to be collected across campus to identify what positions exist and their primary responsibilities. Elon uses the position descriptions to inform the job architecture by understanding the business needs for a proposed future state.

Elon will continue to collect updated position descriptions throughout the project. If a description has not been updated in the position description tool, the university utilized a combination of historical descriptions, recent position posting language, and industry best practices to map positions.

No. Position titles did not change as a result of the initial project, but may during the merger between Queens University of Charlotte and Elon. Each position will be analyzed based on the assigned duties, experience, and education required for the position. Each position will be mapped to an internal classification to fit within the job architecture system. All departments will continue to use their preferred working titles.

Years of service is not a factor that will be taken into consideration as we build the job architecture. Five consistent factors will be utilized to place positions within the architecture. These five factors include: Institutional Impact, Innovation & Complexity, Communication & Influence, Leadership & Talent Management, and Knowledge & Experience (required for the position). Individual employee attributes will be taken into consideration when reviewing placement within the salary structure.

At this time there will be no changes to employee working titles. If a position becomes vacant and the duties have significantly changed, this may be used as an opportunity to recommend a title change prior to posting.

No.

Additional employee communications regarding how employee positions are mapped within the Navigate Your Career architecture will be communicated at a later date.

Yes. The newly developed job architecture will be shared publicly at a later date under the Resources section of the Navigate Your Career web page. Once the job architecture has been implemented and we transition into our new talent management system, PageUp, newly posted positions will incorporate the position mapping information so that employees can quickly identify growth opportunities.

The Navigate Your Career project at Elon University is designed to recruit and retain top employees and reflects the university’s commitment to the goals outlined in the Boldly Elon strategic plan. The project is rooted in Elon’s commitment to connecting its core values with the evolving needs of a diverse workforce. Elon Human Resources has been fully immersed in this work and has partnered with internal leaders and staff at all levels and from each area of the university.

For the university to attract, retain and develop talent, Elon is aligning our staff positions within a consistent job structure that allows for transparency and career growth. Providing a better structure for positions benefits the university and its employees in the following ways:

• Defining career leveling factors, which account for the impact of a job’s role and outline potential career streams based on relevant skills, knowledge, abilities, education and experience of each role. This provides employees with a transparent view of career opportunities throughout campus.
• Strengthening internal pay equity in a manner that is fair and consistent across the university.
• Establishing clear career pathways. Employees will now be able to clearly see the paths to growth and progress in their career. This change will give staff greater ownership over their career goals and aspirations, whether in their own department, or in another area of the university.

The project is focused on staff positions and staff with faculty rank only. Faculty, temporary positions, and student positions were not reviewed as part of the project.

Developing and maintaining a strong job architecture system supports pay equity across the university, ensuring that employees in similar positions receive similar pay, while establishing consistent compensation practices. A job architecture system also helps employees understand how their positions support the operations and mission of the university, and how they can continue to advance their careers. This also enables employees to understand and plan their own career growth.

• Developed a job architecture/classification framework to provide a structure that has more defined career factors & levels across all staff positions.
• Staff positions have been placed within the new job architecture.
• Create career paths that allow current and prospective employees to explore different career paths within the job architecture.
• Integrate the new job architecture into existing HR and IT systems and processes for use by supervisors, HR, and senior leaders for recruiting, hiring, and reporting needs.

• Job families and sub-families are established based on work functions or areas of specialization needed by the university.
• Job levels are designed to address differences between a job’s scope of work and impact as well as the knowledge, skills and experience that an employee needs to perform the essential functions of the job.
• Career streams were created to understand the current and potential methods for how employees across the university can grow and evolve.
• The job architecture will continue to be refined as HR maps existing positions to it. It will also evolve over time as jobs at Elon change.

• Job mapping is a critical step in the job classification process and maps each existing position to the right career level within Elon’s new job architecture.
• Job levels are the hierarchical layers and organizational structure within and across career streams. The intent is to define levels within a career stream based on a set of leveling factors such as institutional impact, innovation and complexity, communication and influence.
• Five job leveling factors have been established within all job levels at Elon. Such factors are the criteria used to determine the appropriate career level for a job within the job architecture, including:
  • Institutional Impact: Nature and scope of influence the level has on its area of responsibility, as well as the level of autonomy.
  • Innovation and Complexity: Degree to which the employee needs to identify and devise solutions to problems and the level of autonomy to make decisions.
  • Communication and Influence: Describes the nature of communication the employee is responsible for, and the level of influence required.
  • Leadership and Talent Management: Responsibility for people development, including supervision, training, coaching and performance management.
  • Knowledge and Experience: Level of expertise required to fulfill responsibilities as defined by minimum levels of formal education and/or work experience.

• Assign Job Family: Based on job family definitions
• Assign Sub-Family: Based on sub-family definitions for sub-families within the job family
• Assign Career Stream: Based on career stream definitions
• Assign Career Level: Based on detailed descriptions for each level within the assigned stream. These descriptions include concrete language regarding a level’s expected:
  • Organizational Impact
  • Complexity of Work
  • Knowledge and Experience
  • Communication and Influence

• Conduct Cross-Calibration: Review both job families and career stream assignments:
  • Review levels within families to ensure career progressions are logical
  • Review job families side-by-side to ensure consistent use of levels across job families.

• Employees: This project will help employees understand their current position and how it relates to other positions. It will also allow employees to view different career paths available at Elon.
• Supervisors: Supervisors will need to understand the job architecture and help explain the changes to employees on their team(s).
• Senior leaders: Senior leaders will continue to provide input into key components of the job architecture for all relevant functional areas and will review how positions are mapped to the new job architecture. Senior leaders will work closely with their leadership teams to prepare and communicate the benefits of the new job architecture within their organizational unit.
• Human Resources: Human Resources staff members will develop our new job architecture and help shape the communication and change management strategy around it.

Current staff positions will be assigned a new job family, sub-family, career stream and career level. Employees will be able to have a more transparent view on how to grow their career. It is important to note that an employee’s job responsibilities and duties will not change. Nothing in this project will negatively impact an employee’s pay or benefits. Like all architecture, the project is a foundational step. With future enhancements that link recruiting, performance management and learning and development, this project aims to provide employees with the tools they need to achieve a clearer picture of the pathway through which they can reach their professional goals and aspirations.

A career path is a clear and defined roadmap that allows an employee to understand and develop a plan to advance or move laterally into different opportunities within Elon if they so desire. This process is built to empower an employee’s career by providing them with the resources and tools to make educated decisions on their career path as they progress in their role. Career paths also allow for better talent management for supervisors as they can see how departments are organized more clearly and establish long-term growth plans for each employee.

The job architecture will offer transparency for employees to assess options for their career progression and to better understand the requirements for growing and advancing in their careers. Resources and tools will be developed to aid employees with these efforts in the future.  With these efforts, Elon’s ability to identify the scope, responsibilities, and level of positions will be enhanced, which will offer supervisors and their employees increased transparency and easier identification of promotional opportunities.

Supervisors will be able to use career streams and career levels to improve workforce planning and development, budgeting, and talent recruitment and retention. Supervisors can create professional development plans and training programs specific to levels within the new career streams. Resources and tools will be developed to aid supervisors with these efforts in the future.

No. Reporting structures and individual roles and responsibilities will not change on account of this project.

No, the initial Navigate Your Career project aimed to align current Elon titles around similar job responsibilities, job functions and career levels, allowing for greater consistency and transparency across the institution. However, some titles may be updated during the merger between Queens University of Charlotte and Elon. Though each staff position will be placed in one of the various career streams and a career level within the stream, employees will still be able to use current working titles to clarify role responsibilities and/or reporting lines.

Changing employee compensation is not the goal of the job architecture project. In fact, nothing in this project will negatively impact an employee’s pay or benefits. The project’s focus is to group similar bodies of work and levels of work. The project will not impact the work that employees perform, nor result in salary increases. The primary goal of a job architecture is to link potential career growth and development to performance and professional development opportunities.

The university will review the architecture on an ongoing basis to ensure that it is always closely aligned with the external market. Based on this review, adjustments will be made as necessary. Any adjustments or future changes and enhancements will always be communicated in advance.

The new job architecture was designed to be flexible and allow for growth. We regularly evaluate all aspects of the university to ensure continued growth and to support the mission and strategic goals.

Employees learned their position placement in the architecture via email in October 2024.