Context   

A global leader in the food supply chain industry had all hourly/production jobs in a single job family, without standardized job descriptions, hiring and training requirements, career paths and salary structures. This challenge was limiting their ability to recruit, train, develop and retain employees, while increasing the risk of unionization, which would be costly and limit their management flexibility. The client sought assistance from us to develop a structured job leveling system to define, organize and market price all hourly/production roles within the US organization.  

Accomplishment  

The primary goal of this engagement was to develop and roll out a structured job architecture framework that clearly defines the responsibilities and skills required for each job and ties each job to a competitive market hourly rate.  

Survey Current Jobs: We collaborated with internal stakeholders to understand the work/skills being performed at each of the manufacturing facilities in the US.  

• Writing Job Descriptions: Using the information that we learned from surveying the current jobs, we coordinated with regional operations leaders and HR to write standard job descriptions for the twenty-five most common jobs being performed.  

• Creation of Job Levels: Created four levels of knowledge, skills, and ability for each of the twenty-five standard jobs, creating a career and pay progression for each job.   

• Market Pay Analysis: Used the newly created job descriptions and levels to conduct a market pay analysis and recommended hourly rates for each job.  

• Project plan development: We developed a comprehensive project plan to define deliverables, timelines, and key milestones for roll out of the new job structure.  

• Change management plan: Recognizing the importance of smooth adoption and buy-in from leadership and employees, we created a tailored change management plan to guide the organization through the transitions associated with the new job structure.  

Outcome  

With our support, the client successfully launched the new job structure, allowing the company to better define jobs to attract/train/retain key talent, while paying competitively to the market, and decreasing the chance for costly unionization efforts.