Job Families?
04/24/08 1:35 PM

Hi,

I was reading the latest Kaplan/Norton book and came across the idea of "strategic job families." Not completely sure what they are or why they're important. Seems to me like you'd just want to use traditional job classifications -- like driver, janitor, etc. No?

Tina

RE: Job Families?
05/29/08 9:47 AM

Tina,
This may be oversimplified, but strategic job families are those job families that contribute the most to the strategic objectives in your strategy map. I was watching the TV this morning and their was an insurance company advertizing that they believed the overall experience you have with interacting with their staff is extemely important. Thus, someone in their strategic job family would be a customer account manager. Imagine a competitor of theirs who is just interested in giving you the lowest price for insurance. That company also has customer account managers,but they are not as critical to the value proposition. The second company might have a job familiy for a person like an Analyst who is responsible for segregating risk and effectively pricing policies as one of the most strategic job families.

Does this make sense? In summary, the strategic job families are the ones that have the biggest influence over the specific strategy of that organization.

-Ted

RE: Job Families?
06/19/08 9:10 AM

I found this concept too complicated in our organization, and maybe that is because we have 500 employees and not 5000. We just did basic personal scorecards.

RE: Job Families?
06/20/08 2:25 PM

Personal Scorecards may be completely sufficient for your needs.
Strategic Job Families are a strategic way of looking at your workforce. There may particular administrators who make a strategic difference for your clients, the evolving role of drivers may be expanding to include customer service making them more important.
It is just important to look at the strategy and understand which roles will make the strategic difference in the future. Personal scorecards, development programs, personal attention all make a difference in developing these roles for the future.

Laura

RE: Job Families?
07/09/08 2:46 PM

Is there a case where volunteers are in Key Strategic Job Families? We really rely heavily on our volunteers to manage communities and develop standards?
-Jeanne

RE: Job Families?
09/10/08 8:10 AM

I don't know much about volunteers and job families, but someone asked me what book it is in, and I think some of the best work is in the K/N Alignment book. The book is a heavy read, but if you are a student of this work, I would look there.