You probably understand the importance of skills mapping (and if you don't, here's our article on the subject!), but do you know the importance of job mapping?
In the constantly evolving world of human resources, job mapping proves to be a valuable tool for HR professionals. Rather than providing simple job descriptions, it establishes a holistic and dynamic vision of roles within an organization.
In this article, we will explore the importance of job mapping, its strategic benefits, and how it can be implemented with specialized HR software. Get ready, as we are about to dive into the captivating art of navigating professional careers.
What is job mapping?
Definition of Job Mapping
Job mapping is an HR tool that enables companies and HR departments to provide a clear and comprehensive view of the jobs present within a company. It categorizes jobs and positions based on job profiles. Positions are grouped into professional groups and subgroups.
Job mapping is a means for companies to compile information and have general data on existing and possible jobs in their organization. It is also referred to as a "job framework" in some companies like 365Talents.
Objectives of job mapping
Job mapping presents the jobs currently available in the company, but not only that. Its objectives are to identify, analyze, and represent all the jobs in a company or organization, taking into account their developments and required skills. This includes:
Compiling the inventory of jobs: by gathering information about positions, tasks, responsibilities, and employees' skills, it identifies and accurately describes each job performed within the company to make informed decisions.
Analyzing skills: By describing jobs, job mapping evaluates the skills required for each position, as well as those already possessed within the company.
Customizing career ladders: Job mapping allows visualization of different career progressions within the organization. HR can thus propose personalized development and career plans (internal mobility, training, skill enhancement, etc.) to foster engagement and retain employees.
Benefits of job mapping
Job mapping has several advantages. It allows you to:
- Optimize performance and job satisfaction
- Align skills and strengths with professional requirements
- Enhance career progression
- Identify skill gaps and training needs
- Enable individuals to improve their skills and stay competitive
Skills mapping vs. job mapping: what are the differences?
Skills mapping vs. job mapping
Unlike skills mapping, which focuses on the company’s skills, job mapping offers a comprehensive view of the expertise of all your employees, regardless of their position within the company. However, like skills mapping, it highlights not only the skills held by employees but also those the company needs and that are not yet present within the organization.
These two tools are complementary: one to have a precise understanding of the skills held and available within the company, the other to detail the expertise of each employee for a specific job.
Combined, your teams can precisely see what skills they need to develop to access a position and become experts.
Why is job mapping essential for your company?
Key challenges of job mapping
Job mapping has several major challenges for HR and companies that are necessary for its success:
Managing talent: Job mapping is primarily useful for improving your talent management. It helps identify talents within your company, pinpointing employees with the required skills to fill strategic positions or to move towards new responsibilities.
Reducing skill gaps: By offering a precise view of the skills acquired within the organization, it identifies the missing skills needed to perform each job in the best possible way. HR can thus propose skills development plans to reduce the gap between the skills possessed and those lacking but necessary for the execution of a job or project.
Anticipating skill needs: By identifying key skills for each job and anticipating future developments, job mapping allows for forecasting future needs in terms of recruitment, training, and skills development.
Strategic workforce planning, or SWP: By analyzing the configuration of positions within the company, job mapping plays a crucial role in aligning strategic objectives with the company's talents. It helps determine the necessary measures to achieve short and long-term goals by identifying skill gaps and implementing appropriate action plans.
Fostering internal mobility and development: As mentioned earlier, job mapping identifies missing skills or future skills for a given job. HR can thus propose employees mobility and skills enhancement plans to evolve within their current positions or within the organization.
Improving retention and engagement: By promoting employee development and their skills through internal mobility or training plans, employees are encouraged to grow and feel valued. These are key elements in their job satisfaction. Consequently, they are more engaged, thereby improving talent retention within the organization.
A beneficial practice throughout the employee's journey
One might not realize it, but job mapping is involved throughout the employee's journey: it can be useful in every process, every HR strategy put in place to make the employee experience a success. Including:
- Recruitment and candidate selection: Even before welcoming new employees, job mapping is involved in your recruitment strategy. By analyzing the required hard and soft skills for each job, it facilitates the recruitment process by identifying profiles that match the organization's needs. It allows you to assess whether potential internal candidates are qualified for a position, or if you need to recruit externally.
- Training and skills development: Job mapping is a valuable tool for skills management and training. It helps identify skill gaps, define training needs, and develop plans for each individual's skills enhancement and development.
- Career management: By examining possible career paths, job mapping facilitates and improves career management. It identifies opportunities for career progression, helping to define individual development plans. Thus, you can offer personalized career paths, a strategic element not to be overlooked to increase performance, beat the competition, and retain your employees!
- Salary management: Although payment is not the sole engagement factor for an employee, it remains an important aspect. Job mapping assesses the skills and responsibilities associated with each job, allowing for the definition of appropriate salary grids. This promotes a payment policy based on objective and precise criteria.
Which solution should you choose for your job mapping?
The complementarity of skills and job mapping
Skills and job mapping complement each other as they focus on different yet interconnected aspects of human resource management.
On the one hand, skills mapping focuses on evaluating and describing the specific skills possessed by employees within the organization. This clearly defines individual strengths, potential gaps, and training needs for each employee.
On the other hand, job mapping focuses on the structure of roles within the company, identifying responsibilities, required levels of experience, and career advancement opportunities associated with each position. This determines how individual skills align with the specific requirements of each position.
By combining these two approaches, companies can better understand the matching between employee skills and job requirements, which facilitates employee performance management, with targeted training to improve his performance on his current job, career pathing , and get valuable insights for strategic human resource planning. Thus, the combination of these two mappings allows for more efficient and targeted talent management, contributing to the optimization of individual and organizational performance.
It is thus better to find comprehensive HR software, specially designed to identify each person's skills and preferences, to better meet the specific needs of the company and employees aspirations for increasing engagement and loyalty.
Why 365Talents for your job mapping?
To fully leverage the benefits of job mapping, organizations need a solution that goes beyond static job descriptions and offers dynamic, AI-powered insights into roles, skills, and career paths. Traditional job repositories quickly become outdated, requiring constant manual updates. The key is to adopt a solution that not only centralizes job data but also enriches it with real-time intelligence.
1. Centralizing and structuring job data
365Talents provides a single source of truth for job-related data, consolidating job titles, descriptions, and classifications across the organization. Our AI algorithms analyze job roles, identify overlaps, and refine job architecture, eliminating duplication and inconsistencies. This ensures a clean, structured, and adaptable job framework that aligns with evolving business needs.
Key benefit: A unified job architecture that simplifies job management and ensures consistency across departments and regions.
2. Generating job descriptions with AI
Missing job descriptions? No problem. 365Talents uses Generative AI to automatically create accurate, well-structured job descriptions based on job titles and specifications. This saves HR teams valuable time, ensuring that all roles are properly documented without the hassle of manual input.
Key benefit: Instant, AI-generated job descriptions that accelerate job structuring and enhance HR efficiency.
3. Building an AI-powered skills ontology
Beyond job descriptions, skills are the foundation of workforce development. 365Talents’ proprietary AI extracts and categorizes key skills for each role, helping companies build a skills ontology that evolves with employee input and market trends. Additionally, our platform benchmarks roles against real-time industry data, identifying emerging skills that may be critical for future workforce planning.
Key benefit: A dynamic, AI-driven skills framework that ensures alignment with business strategy and market demands.
4. From job mapping to career pathing
Job mapping isn’t just about defining roles, it’s about empowering employees with visibility into career growth opportunities. With 365Talents, HR teams can create clear, AI-driven career paths that suggest personalized learning and mobility opportunities based on employees’ ambitions and skills.
Key benefit: Employees gain a transparent view of their career possibilities, increasing engagement and retention.
How does 365Talents transforms job mapping
365Talents transforms job mapping into a strategic, AI-powered process that connects jobs, skills, and career paths, driving better talent management decisions. Whether you’re looking to structure job data, identify key skills, or enable internal mobility, our solution provides the agility and intelligence HR teams need to stay ahead.
365Talents helps you create a personalized fit-for-future skills and job architecture to meet your business’s evolving needs.
Smarter, faster, and guided. Experience our simplified and proven method.
Learn more about our Skills and Job Architecture solution here.
If you would like more information on how 365Talents provides dynamic skills and job mapping to improve your career management, request a demo with our experts today!
