Ben Haddad· Compensation Consultant, Tidewater Utilities
Posted in Job Architecture & Careers ·
After reading several hundred appeals and promotion cases at a German automotive supplier of about 12,000 employees, I've concluded that most disputes about levels are really disputes about vague verbs. So in our rewrite this year I banned a few.
'Supports', 'contributes to', 'is involved in' and 'drives' are gone, because none tells you what the person decides. 'Manages' may only be used with an object and a number. 'Strategic' is not allowed below level 8.
In their place each level states what the person decides alone, what they recommend, and who checks their work and how often. Our descriptors went from about 220 words per level to 90, and panel disagreements on first read dropped noticeably. I'd be interested in other people's banned lists.
4 helpful · 5 insightful · 2 agree · 4 replies · 211 views · 4 following
Victor UedaCEP
Job Architecture Lead, Independent
'Complex' is top of mine. Every level in our old framework handled 'complex' problems, with 'highly complex' two levels up and 'the most complex' above that. We replaced it with what makes the problem hard: no precedent, conflicting stakeholders, incomplete data. Managers can actually point at those.
VP, Total Rewards, Meridian Health Systems
Agree on most, but I would defend 'contributes to' at junior levels. For a level 2 analyst it is an accurate description: they do not decide anything alone, and forcing a 'decides' statement produces nonsense like 'decides the format of their own spreadsheet'. We say what they produce and who reviews it.
Ulla VargasWWP
VP, Total Rewards, Beacon Retail Group
How did you handle translation? We wrote tight English descriptors, and then the French and Portuguese versions reintroduced every vague verb because the translators reached for natural phrasing. We now have a reviewer from reward in each language sign off, which added six weeks.
Total Rewards Manager, Aurora Hospitality
Fair point on junior levels; our levels 1 to 3 do say what is produced and who reviews it, so I overstated the rule.
On translation, we drafted German and English in parallel with the same two people, and had the Czech and Mexican Spanish versions checked by local reward leads against a list of the banned terms in each language.
