This article explains how to set up your company's job architecture through the Personio settings, and how to assign a job to the employee via their Employee profile.

Before you start

• Permissions: You need to have either an Administrator role or edit rights to Job architecture and catalog to be able to set up the job architecture.

Grant other employees access to the job architecture

As a Personio Administrator, you can grant access to the Job architecture settings (Settings > Organization > Jobs & careers) for other employees to configure the job architecture.

Employees with:

• Edit rights act as Administrators, and can view and edit the job catalog through the Personio settings. 
• View rights can view and assign jobs to other employees via their Employee profile, provided they have access to the section containing the Job name in the Personal Info tab.

You can also provide more specific permissions to certain employees:

Note:
View access to Job architecture and catalog is a prerequisite to see the dropdown menu of all jobs. Therefore, it is also a prerequisite to propose or assign a job to an employee.

Compile data on your company's job architecture

Mandatory

Optional

Example of a job architecture
Job architecture for the fictional company “WorkWonders Ltd.":

Job levels:

• Entry-Level Positions: They require little to no professional experience. They focus on foundational tasks and skill development under close supervision.
• Junior Positions: They require some relevant experience. The employee executes defined tasks with moderate autonomy and contributes to team objectives.
• Mid-Level Positions: They require substantial professional experience. They involve independent project ownership, complex problem-solving, and mentorship of junior staff.
• Senior-Level Positions: These are for highly experienced professionals, accountable for strategic decision-making, cross-functional leadership, and driving departmental or organizational initiatives.
• Director-Level Positions: These roles focus on departmental or multi-team oversight, setting strategic direction within their function, and ensuring alignment with broader organizational goals.
• Executive-Level Positions: Roles at the highest organizational tier, responsible for overarching leadership, long-term strategy, and significant business impact across the entire company.

Job tracks:

• Professional track
• Manager track

Job families:

• Business Development
• Product Marketing
• Talent Acquisition
• Customer Success Management
• Product Researcher
• Software EngineeringSales and Marketing

Jobs:

• Senior Marketing Specialist, Job track Professional, Job level P5 Expert, Grade 5, Salary band mid-point €35.000
• Marketing Supervisor, Job track Manager, Job level M1, Grade 2, Salary band mid-point €55.000
• Marketing Senior Manager, Job track Manager, Job level M4, Grade 5, Salary band mid-point €65.000
• Senior Director Sales & Marketing, Job track Manager, Job level M6 Sr. Director, Grade 7, Salary band mid-point €120.000

In Personio, they set up their job tracks and levels as shown in the table below.

Set up your company's job architecture

Set up the job architecture in the settings

To set up the job architecture via the Personio settings, follow these steps: 

1. Go to Settings.
2.  In the Organization section, click Jobs & careers.
3.  In the Job catalog tab, click Job tracks and levels > Configure to set up both the tracks and levels. Both tracks and levels need to have unique names. You can customize the grades, tracks, and levels to reflect your company's structure. Note: The global grades cannot be changed, but unnecessary grades can be deleted. For example, if you only need 8 grades in total, you can delete grades 9 and 10. 
4. Click Job Families > Manage to add the job families present in your company. 
5. Click Create new job to add the Job name, and select the job family, track and level.
6. In the same window, set the salary bands. You can set them globally or per workplace. You can assign the same salary band to multiple workplaces.
   1. When setting a global band, define the minimum, maximum and mid-value (optional) for the job. 
   2. When setting a band per workplace, define the minimum, maximum and mid-value for the job per workplace to account for location-specific differences.

Set up the job architecture using the Import area

You can set up the job architecture using the import functionality. 

First you need to set up job tracks and levels, as you cannot create these with an import. If you add a job track or level in the import, you need to add them both, and they need to match the existing ones in Personio.

1. Go to Settings.
2. In the Organization section, click Imports.
3. In Choose import type, select either Job catalog or Employees, as you can use both import files for a job architecture import.
4. In Download template, download the relevant template.
5. Follow the template guidelines to import the data. You only need the job names for a successful import. All other data is optional.

Tip:
With the Employees template, you can create new jobs and job families just by adding them to the sheet.

Update your company's job architecture

To update the existing job architecture and the different job attributes:

1.  Go to Settings.
2. In the Organization section, click Jobs & careers.
3. Click to Job catalog. 

You can also perform a bulk update with the Job catalog import:

1. To export your current catalog, go to Settings.
2. In the Organization section, click Jobs & careers.
3. Click the three-dots icon and select Export catalog.
4. Update the file as necessary.
5. Reimport the file.

How updates to the job architecture affect career frameworks

A career framework maps competencies and expectations for each job family in your job architecture. When you update your job architecture, the following applies:

• You cannot delete a job family that has a career framework. To delete the job family, you need to delete the linked career framework first.
• Removing a job or a job's level results in the job not showing in the framework.
• Moving a job to a new family means you have to map the job's expectations in the framework again.

Assign a Job name to an employee

Option 1: Via their employee profile

1. Go to the relevant employee's profile and click Personal information  > Edit > Job name. 
2. Select the relevant Job name in combination with the respective Job level from the dropdown menu. You can now review further details of the job selected (for example, Job track and level, if specified). The dropdown groups the jobs per Job Family. Within each family, it shows the Job Names the following way: Job name, Track, Level. The order is alphabetical. 
3. To retroactively assign a position to an employee, click Review and set effective date and enter a past date.
4. Click Submit to save. 

Note:
Assigning a Job name to the employee will not impact the value of the Position attribute. For example, the currently used Position name is not updated in the employee’s profile header.

Option 2: Via the People list

You can also assign a Job name to the employee via the People list. To do so:

1. Go to Organization > People list. 
2. Select the checkbox next to the relevant employee or employees. 
3. From the menu at the top, click Edit profile. 
4. In the window that appears, add the Job name attribute and its relevant value. 

For the selected employees, you can now see the values for all the job attributes in individual columns (Job name, Job track, Job level, Job family).

Next steps

Setting up your company’s job architecture is the first step in Personio's Workforce Planning journey. Once that’s done, you can set up positions in the Positions tab and launch a cycle in the Planning Cycles tab (if you have the relevant Personio subscription).