Ulla Iversen· Total Rewards Manager, Aurora Hospitality
Posted in Job Architecture & Careers ·
Sharing this because I suspect we are not alone. I look after reward for a Canadian insurer with about 5,200 employees. In 2024 we consolidated 62 job families into 23, with sub-families allowed only where the market data genuinely differed.
Twelve months on I audited the HR system and found eleven new 'specialisms' that behave exactly like families: separate titles, separate criteria documents, and in three cases separate pay ranges agreed locally. Most came from actuarial, claims and technology, each with a reasonable-sounding argument at the time.
My lesson is that the consolidation was the easy part and we never defined what a new family has to prove. I would be interested in what tests others apply, and whether anyone has actually refused one.
8 helpful · 4 insightful · 4 replies · 315 views · 6 following
Benefits Manager, Silverline Media
Our test has three parts and a request needs all of them: at least 25 incumbents, a distinct external market we can price against, and a career path of at least three levels inside the family. Since 2022 we have had nine requests and approved two. The incumbent threshold kills most of them before any debate starts.
Elif AlvarezCRP
Director, Total Rewards, Kestrel Aerospace
A headcount threshold would not work for us. I'm at a hospital group in Australia and some of our most distinct families are small, perfusionists for example, about 14 people, with a labour market entirely their own. I would rank the market test first and treat size as a tie-breaker.
Compensation Consultant, Independent
The three locally agreed pay ranges worry me more than the families. That tells you someone outside reward can create a range.
We closed that by making range creation a system permission held by two people. Families still get argued about, but nobody can attach money to one without us.
Compensation Consultant, Tidewater Utilities
We refused one last year: a 'customer success engineering' family that turned out to be six people and a manager who wanted a different bonus plan. What helped was asking what would change for an employee if the family existed. If the honest answer is only the title, it is a title request, not a family.
