Job levelling

Global Grading System (GGS) and Career Map

Towers Watson’s systematic approach to job levelling In combination, the delivery of these programmes
helps organisations manage the opportunities and through job levelling offers a flexible, adaptable
challenges of talent and reward programme design means of communicating career paths, facilitating
and delivery, including: talent mobility and delivering competitive rewards.
• Aligning jobs located in multiple regions or Job levelling also addresses business needs
across different lines of business. ranging from attraction, engagement and retention
• Creating a framework that integrates of key talent, to cost and risk management, to
employees after a merger, acquisition or governance. The key benefits of job levelling for
other structural change. your organisation include:
• Driving consistency, competitiveness and
• A career framework that aligns with business needs
efficiency among HR policies and practices.
and strategy.
• Clarifying distinctions among levels to support
• A common language to describe career paths,
career development.
job requirements and performance expectations.
• Linkages to organisational and job-family
The benefits of job levelling
competencies.
Job levelling is an analytical process that can • Consistent mapping of jobs to external market data.
determine the relative value of jobs in your • Contributes to cost-efficient talent and reward
organisation. It provides a foundation for reward programmes and delivery.
and talent management programmes, including: • Helps ensure internal equity.
• Base pay. Research indicates that organisations that implement
• Short- and long-term incentives. globally consistent job levelling are up to two and a
• Career management. half times as likely to report more effective talent
• Workforce planning. and reward programmes. These include performance
• Succession planning. management, competency models, and leadership
• Learning and development. assessment and development.

Figure 01. Reward and career framework

Supporting the employee life cycle

Workforce Staffing and Development Performance Compensation Succession
analytics and selection and career management and benefits management
planning management

Competency model

Reward and career architecture

Job levelling
A systematic process of determining the relative value of jobs in an organisation

Job family architecture

The infrastructure for organising jobs (job codes, job titles, functions, disciplines)

Inputs
Business Reward and Job Employee Market
context talent strategy content data data
 The Towers Watson approach Global Grading System
We offer a range of job levelling approaches, GGS is a job levelling tool for determining internal job
from established methodologies to custom levels based on an analysis of universally applicable
implementations. Our GGS and Career Map job factors proven to recognise differences in job size.
levelling tools are not only more flexible than GGS accommodates organisations of all sizes,
traditional methods, but also easy to implement, and uses an organisation’s size, complexity and
understand and manage. They can be geographic breadth to assess the number of levels
implemented individually or in tandem, in its grading framework. It then evaluates jobs as
and are: part of a two-step process of banding and grading:
banding places jobs in the framework based on how
• Transparent and objective.
they contribute to the organisation, reflecting a dual
• Easy to explain and administer, with limited
career path; the grading step assesses jobs against
bureaucracy or dependency on consultants.
standard factors.
• Able to accommodate dual career paths
(individual contributor and managerial). GGS provides opportunities for a tailored
• Aligned with market data. implementation within a rigorous and defensible
• Supportive of organisational change. process for job evaluation. It also ensures
• Culturally neutral and applicable worldwide. consistency in the development of a career
• Supported by web-based technology. framework that balances internal equity and
external competitiveness.

“GGS provides opportunities for a tailored

implementation within a rigorous and
defensible process for job evaluation.”

Figure 02. GGS grade map sample

Role contributes (through)

Tasks Skills Expertise Leadership Functional strategy
1 2 3M 4M 5FS Business strategy
Band 5BS
CEO
Grade 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
First-line top
management
Management
career path

Top management

Middle management

Supervisor

1 2 3IC 4IC
Individual contributor

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
career path

Subject matter expert

Professional

Clerical/administrative

Manual

towerswatson.com
Career Map Figure 03. Career Map levelling criteria sample

Career Map is a predefined framework with a

series of career bands and levels that increase in
complexity and responsibility, representing career
progression opportunities.
The Career Map framework clarifies the growth
in jobs from one level to another based on
responsibilities, scope, impact, required
skills and knowledge. The criteria, levels and
language contained in the baseline framework
can be customised to accommodate specific
organisational requirements, including the
development of job functions and families.
Each job is mapped to a career band and level.
Career bands represent different roles and how
those roles contribute to the organisation.
Career Map is flexible: it organises jobs based
on progressive levels of contribution, and
presents opportunities for career pathing and
targeted development. It can also enable your
organisation to engage in robust workforce “Career Map combines a powerful customisable
planning and analytics.
framework with a tested process for consistently
Towers Watson technology and defining and organising jobs across a company.”
market data
Talent|REWARD is an integrated suite of
technology-delivered modules that manage
all aspects of talent and reward programme
analysis, design and administration. Figure 04. Available modules of Talent|REWARD
Talent|REWARD supports GGS; Career Map, ✓ Create survey data warehouse
Survey library
also automated, may be implemented with or ✓ Access survey data online
without supporting technology. ✓ Load employee, job and pay data
Market analysis
✓ Market-price jobs
Towers Watson Data Services (TWDS) publishes
Compensation ✓ Create/model salary structures
an extensive library of annual compensation
design ✓ Model costing scenarios
reports on virtually every industry sector, covering
Global Grading ✓ Automated job levelling
103 countries and linking to both GGS and System ✓ Automates Towers Watson levelling methodology
Career Map.
Compensation ✓ Involve managers in pay decisions
planning ✓ Provide real-time budget control
Further information ✓ Recruiting, learning, performance management,
Talent management
For further information, please contact your career development and succession planning
Towers Watson consultant, or

David Hargrave
+44 20 7170 2926
[email protected]

towerswatson.com Job levelling methodologies: Global Grading System (GGS) and Career Map 3
About Towers Watson
Towers Watson is a leading global professional services
company that helps organisations improve performance
through effective people, risk and financial management.
With 14,000 associates around the world, we offer solutions
in the areas of benefits, talent management, rewards, and
risk and capital management.

Towers Watson is represented in the UK by Towers Watson Limited

and Towers Watson Capital Markets Limited.
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TW-EU-2013-32094. May 2013.

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