The project team disbands next month. Who should own the job architecture after that?

Ownership sits with compensation in our company, and I think that is right, because every levelling decision is ultimately a pay decision. Talent owns the content that hangs off it: development guides, career path pages, learning. They are consulted on criteria changes but they do not approve jobs.

I disagree that it must be compensation. In our Swedish organisation it sits with a small organisation design team, because the commonest reason for a new job is a restructure, and they see those first. Compensation prices what they define. It works because both report to the same director.

What has lasted for us through four years and two reorganisations is splitting by decision type, not by team. Compensation owns the structure: families, levels, criteria, and anything that creates a new job or changes a level. Business partners may assign people to existing jobs and create a position from the catalogue without asking anyone, which is 80% of the volume.

Write it as a one-page decision table before the project closes; ours has eleven rows. And ask for a service standard instead of headcount in the abstract: we committed to five working days for a new job and then showed what that takes.

The decision-type split is what I was missing; I had been arguing about which team instead. I've drafted the table with ten rows and I'm taking a five-day standard and a request for 1.5 heads to the steering group's last meeting.