Changing business environments, shifts in organizational strategy, and key technological transformations are rendering traditional job structures obsolete in 2023.

In today’s agile business environment, the traditional job catalog, once an asset, is becoming a liability.

The digital landscape has changed how work is performed, with hybrid models and cross-functional teams emerging to meet evolving business needs.

Flexible, multidisciplinary roles, contingent employees, and automation are now core elements of the digital workforce.

Traditional job structures can’t keep pace with these changes.

Strategic talent management is essential to design a future-proof job catalog that aligns with the demands of the digital era.

What Is a Job Catalog in Strategic Talent Management?

A job catalog is essentially a list of all roles and responsibilities within a company, along with data about the requirements, level of authority, and salary scale of each position.

It is a key tool in strategic talent management, helping HR determine the expertise they have, identify talent gaps, and set clear performance expectations.

It also benefits employees by clarifying job requirements, growth paths, and training needs.

HR must develop a job catalog precisely aligned with external job roles and skills.

Why is it important for HR leaders to review job catalogs?

Reviewing job catalogs is critical for HR leaders to ensure that job descriptions are accurate and up-to-date.

As evolving roles diverge from traditional ones, job descriptions must be redesigned.

This process supports strategic talent management by helping HR identify gaps in current roles and skills to shape talent strategy more effectively.

It ensures that the organization is competitive in the job market and can attract and retain skilled talent at a time when layoffs make a daily headline.

Also, reviewing job catalogs supports effective talent management and workforce planning because it is mainly data-driven.  

The only way to utilize the modern HR trends is by staying data-driven in the approach to talent, and job catalogs help you do that.

Why is designing a Job Catalog important for strategic talent management?

Compiling a job catalog is important because it centralizes all information related to job positions within the company.

It helps recruiters identify the right candidates by clearly outlining role expectations, required skills, and experience.

A redesigned job catalog also supports strategic talent management by enabling faster job description creation, setting benchmarks, planning workforce needs, and identifying skill gaps.

These insights can inform training programs and recruitment strategies, while also helping categorize the workforce for better organizational alignment.

How to design a Job Catalog as part of strategic talent management?

Building a uniform job catalog is a challenge, especially for organizations with insufficient in-house capacity or knowledge.

The amount of effort this will require depends on the organization’s maturity. The more data-driven and focused on strategic talent management an organization is, the less work it will be.

Here are five easy steps to create a job catalog in 2023.

Step 1: List all jobs and define them clearly

As part of strategic talent management, list each employee and add in-depth information about their roles. For each employee, it’s best practice to include the name, department, parent function, job title, job description, job family, salary scale, and more.

The more information you provide, the better the job profiles can be analyzed.

Step 2: Weigh each job

Doing this helps compare all job positions and define levels within the hierarchy. It supports strategic talent management efforts like talent development and succession planning.

Some companies even attempt benchmarking and evaluate a job based on multiple factors, including responsibilities, working conditions, and required knowledge.

Step 3: Determine Compensation Elements

Strategic talent management involves understanding how annual salary is calculated based on various compensation elements, such as bonuses, holiday pay, and local cost of living.

Answering these questions helps gather all compensation details in one place for the next step.

Step 4: Combine the Data and define the Jobs

Here, you combine the Jobs (step 1) with the Classifications (step 2) and Annual Salary (step 3) to correctly define salary ranges and their allocations.

Doing so gives you the picture of ‘what is’ and thus reflects the current state of organizational talent.

Step 5: Build a job hierarchy

A job hierarchy is critical to add structure to your talent pool. As part of strategic talent management, the way to develop a data-driven job hierarchy is by analyzing all jobs and creating classifications based on multiple elements.

This requires grouping similar jobs into job families, which ultimately form job family groups, and so on.

By the end of this process, you will have a complete job catalog with four key elements, namely:

• Job Family Group: A collection of job families  
• Job Family: A group of related job profiles
• Job Profile: A collection of job details assigned to a position
• Job Details: This includes job descriptions, levels, skills & competencies, and more.

Bottomline

While creating a job catalog may seem easy, it gets progressively tougher for companies that do not manage job data with precision.

In other words, companies lacking strategic talent management practices may struggle to define a job catalog.

HR leaders must carefully understand the Job Catalog and how it aligns with external job roles and skills.

This step helps them evaluate available skills versus gaps in a directional manner.

While designing your own job catalog is necessary, it’s also equally important to compare your job catalog with external job families and include innovative content in it.

Draup for Talent, an AI-powered talent management tool, offers comprehensive insights into workforce trends and talent management strategies.  

With access to data from over 4,500 job roles across 33 industries, 7,000 universities, and 30,000 skills, Draup provides accurate data sets and expert analysis to help you build a robust talent pipeline strategy. Its tailor-made reports and insights enable strategic talent management to be a seamless process.