Template

Job Leveling Template

Global HR

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A job leveling template is an essential tool for any organization looking to streamline its talent management and create a fair, transparent system for career progression.

Without a predefined structure, organizations often face the chaos of inconsistent role classifications, unclear career paths, and compensation imbalances, leaving HR professionals overwhelmed and employees frustrated and disengaged.

Download our free job leveling template and eliminate these challenges by creating a standardized system that aligns roles with responsibilities, experience, and impact on the organization.

Job leveling template overview

Our job leveling template is straightforward to complete and comes with full guidance and instructions. Key features of the template are:

Full instructions for use: Get a detailed outline of how to set up and use the template, as well as how to use the template with other Deel resources
Full leveling criteria explanation: There are eight leveling criteria—experience and expertise, key responsibilities, scope of influence, competencies, impact, decision making, leadership and management, and performance benchmarks—each criterion is fully defined and explained, with practical examples of what that would look like for various levels
Promotion criteria: Ensure that managers will not struggle anymore to justify promotions with clear criteria covering elements such as achievement of performance goals, demonstration of key competencies, and professional development
Leveling matrix examples: Find two examples for human resources and marketing departments so you can see what a fully fleshed-out leveling matrix would look like at the end
Compatible with Google documents and Microsoft Excel and easily adaptable: Adapt the template for your organizational structure—add departments, roles, or leveling criteria

How to use this job leveling template

To set up the template, you’ll first need to gather some information about your organization, department, or team (depending on how comprehensive you’d like to be). Here’s how to make use of use this template:

Define job families by grouping similar roles based on shared skills and responsibilities—smaller organizations can equate departments with job families, especially since they would probably have a more streamlined organizational structure with fewer specialized roles having broader responsibilities
Identify career paths considering either function (e.g., marketing, software engineering) or specialty (e.g., software development, social media marketing)
Define different levels within each job family/career path to reflect career progression, such as junior, mid-level, and senior roles—consider whether you want to define dual paths for individual contributors and leadership roles or a single leveling from entry-level to manager
Select the criteria for level classification such as responsibilities, competencies, scope of influence, and impact—consider also adding performance benchmarks and metrics for each level—use the included criteria from the template for this step
Develop a job leveling matrix that displays the roles and levels based on previously defined criteria—use this matrix to provide structure to how roles are classified, ensuring consistency across department
Populate the matrix with relevant information for each role, starting with role responsibilities, competencies, and depth of expertise—consider core competencies that all your organization should display (e.g., thinking innovatively, giving and receiving feedback) and role-specific competencies
Finalize the promotion criteria that will transparently communicate to your team members how to move from one level to the next
Complete the template: With all this information at your fingertips, you should now be able to complete the template

Here are just some general guidelines for the template’s use:

Be consistent: Apply the leveling system universally across all departments, with all terms defined in the same manner throughout (so that similar jobs have similar expectations)
Be transparent: Share and clarify the job leveling structure with all key stakeholders and employees for a fair and equitable process and a clear path to career growth
Be flexible: Not all roles fit easily into predefined boxes, so be ready to accommodate unique roles and individuals
Support: When rolling out this framework, arrange workshops or mentoring sessions to help your workforce understand new responsibilities, promotion criteria, and salary ranges
Integrate: Link the leveling framework to other core talent management processes such as performance reviews, defining new jobs, and career development planning
Review: Always review and update your leveling framework to ensure it is up to date and still fits the shape of your organization and business needs, whether startup or enterprise-level

FAQs

What is a job leveling matrix?

A job leveling matrix is a tool used to categorize organizational roles based on clearly defined criteria such as responsibilities, skills, impact, and seniority. It helps to create a consistent framework for job classification and career progression. The matrix typically includes a grid where one axis represents job levels (e.g., entry-level, mid-level, senior-level). The other axis represents competencies or job families (e.g., engineering, marketing, finance).

The matrix helps align job roles with compensation structures, performance expectations, and growth opportunities, ensuring internal consistency and equity across the organization.

What is a job leveling framework?

A leveling framework is a structured approach to defining job levels within an organization. It outlines the criteria for different roles, helping to map out the hierarchy and progression paths.

This framework ensures clarity and consistency in how roles are evaluated and classified. It helps improve onboarding, improve morale and boost employee retention.

What is the job leveling method?

Job leveling is a method for evaluating and categorizing job roles within an organization based on specific criteria such as experience, expertise, responsibilities, and influence. This helps ensure consistency and fairness in job titles, compensation, and career development opportunities.

The process is often applied following a restructuring or when expanding departments or teams. It is essential for new organizations or regional offices and can highlight growth opportunities and training needs.

How does a job-leveling framework relate to career progression frameworks?

A job-leveling framework is closely related to career progression frameworks as it provides the basis for defining how employees can advance within the organization. It sets clear criteria for promotion and helps employees understand the skills and experiences needed to move to the next level.

How do you set up job levels?

Setting up job levels requires:

Defining specific criteria for each level (experience, job responsibilities, scope of influence, etc.).
Mapping out the progression from entry-level to senior roles.
Ensuring consistency and transparency in the application of these criteria across your organizational structure.

What is an example of job leveling?

An example of job leveling might include defining levels for a marketing department:

Marketing Associate: Entry-level, foundational understanding of marketing principles
Marketing Specialist: Mid-level, deeper understanding, and some experience
Senior Marketing Manager: Senior-level, comprehensive expertise and leadership responsibilities

What is the difference between a job function and a job family?

A job function refers to the overall duties and responsibilities associated with a specific role or set of roles. It describes what the job entails in terms of work tasks and deliverables, such as sales, engineering, or customer service.

A job family groups together roles that perform similar functions or tasks but at different levels of seniority or complexity. A job family allows organizations to create clear progression pathways for roles with similar functions.

What is the difference between a job group and a job family?

A job group is a broader categorization of similar job roles that may include multiple job families. It often refers to roles that share general characteristics or job types, typically for regulatory or equal employment opportunity (EEO) purposes.

For example, a job group might include all “technical roles” or “administrative roles,” regardless of specific functions.

A job family is a more specific categorization that groups jobs based on shared skills, functions, and responsibilities.

For example, within the broader job group of “technical roles,” you may have the specific job family of “software development” that includes different levels of software engineers.

What is the difference between a job family and a department?

A job family is a grouping of roles that share similar responsibilities, skills, and functions across various departments. It cuts across the organization and focuses on the nature of the work, regardless of where the roles are located.

For example, the “Engineering” job family might include software engineers, systems engineers, and network engineers, regardless of which department they report to.

A department is an organizational unit where employees perform work related to a specific business function. Departments are defined by their business area or focus, such as HR, Marketing, or Finance. Each department may have employees from multiple job families.

For example, the Finance department may have accountants (part of the “Accounting” job family) and analysts (part of the “Data Analysis” job family).

What is an example of job grading?

Job grading might involve assigning grades to roles based on complexity and impact:

Grade 1: Routine tasks, closely supervised (e.g., Data Entry Clerk). Grade 5: Complex tasks, significant decision-making responsibilities (e.g., Senior Project Manager). Grade 10: Strategic responsibilities, high impact on the organization (e.g., Chief Executive Officer).

Grading is often used by public sector organizations or companies with large workforces to ensure parity across multiple offices and branches.