Job architecture example: what a defensible pay structure actually looks like (SMB, 2026)

"Just show me what one of these actually looks like." That is the question almost every small-business employer asks the moment the EU pay transparency rules come up. The theory is quick to explain: weigh the roles, group them, wrap salary bands around them. But until you have seen it worked out on paper, it stays abstract.

This article does exactly that. We take a fictional but realistic installation company with five roles and build a job architecture around it, step by step. You will see which factors count, how the roles relate to each other, and which salary bands fall out at the end. At the close you can view the same example interactively or have your own first role weighed for free.

What a job architecture actually answers

A job architecture (a "functiehuis" in Dutch) is not HR decoration. It answers one simple, legal question: does someone doing comparable work also earn comparable pay? The EU Pay Transparency Directive forces you to be able to justify that, and to decide "work of equal value" not on gut feeling but on four objective factors:

• Skills and knowledge (education, experience, competence)
• Effort (physical and mental, and how intense it is)
• Responsibility (for people, equipment, money, safety)
• Working conditions (pressure, outdoor work, irregular hours)

Every role gets a weight on these four factors. That weight decides where the role sits in the structure, not the other way around. That is the whole point: the grading follows from the weighting, not from who negotiated hardest when they were hired.

The example: an installation company with five roles

Picture a mid-sized installation company: heating, plumbing, some electrical work. Five core roles, around 40 employees. Here is what those roles look like before we weigh them:

• Installer carries out installation and maintenance on site, following the work order.
• Lead installer / foreman runs a small team on the job and is the point of contact on site.
• Work planner translates projects into materials, planning and drawings from the office.
• Service coordinator schedules faults and maintenance and is the hub towards customers.
• Branch manager carries end responsibility for the branch, its revenue and its staff.

On paper everyone intuitively knows the branch manager sits "higher" than the installer. But intuition is not justification. The question is: how much higher, why, and are the service coordinator and the work planner on the same level or not?

Step 1: weigh the four factors

We give each role a score from 1 (low) to 5 (high) on the four factors. This is the heart of the weighting: not "what do I think of it", but "what does the role objectively demand".

Role	Skills and knowledge	Effort	Responsibility	Working conditions
Installer	2	4	2	4
Lead installer / foreman	3	4	3	4
Work planner	3	2	3	2
Service coordinator	3	3	3	2
Branch manager	4	3	5	2

Notice what already shows up. The installer scores low on skills but high on effort and working conditions (physical work, outdoors, at the customer). The work planner is the mirror image: more thinking, less physical strain. This is exactly the kind of difference the law wants you to make explicit, because otherwise "the installer works harder" disappears under "the work planner has an office job".

Step 2: from weighting to job levels

Add up the scores and you get a ranking. Roles that land close together go into the same job group, even if the work itself is very different. That is intended: work of equal value, not identical work.

Role	Total weight	Job group
Installer	12	Group A
Service coordinator	11	Group B
Work planner	10	Group B
Lead installer / foreman	14	Group B
Branch manager	14	Group C

Something interesting happens here. The work planner, the service coordinator and the lead installer all land in the same job group, even though their daily work is completely different. That is not a mistake, it is the outcome of equal value: different work, comparable weight, so comparable pay.

Look also at the lead installer and the branch manager. Both come out at a total weight of 14, and yet they do not sit in the same group. That looks contradictory, but the total is a first sort, not a final verdict. At the boundary you look at the profile, not only the sum. The branch manager scores a 5 on responsibility (the whole branch, its revenue, its staff), the foreman a 3 (one team on the job). A point of responsibility for a whole business weighs more than a point of effort on a building site. That is exactly why you may still split roles with an equal total, as long as you can explain why. Being able to explain it is the difference between a job architecture that survives scrutiny and one that collapses.

Step 3: the salary bands around it

Only now do the numbers arrive. Each job group gets a salary band with a floor and a ceiling and a few steps in between. The bands overlap slightly on purpose, so an experienced installer can earn more than a starting foreman without the logic breaking.

Job group	Roles	Salary band (gross per month)
Group A	Installer	2,600 to 3,300 euro
Group B	Service coordinator, work planner, lead installer	3,200 to 4,300 euro
Group C	Branch manager	4,800 to 6,500 euro

These figures are an illustrative example, not advice for your company. What matters is the structure: everyone in group B sits inside the same band, whether they work in the office or on site. When an employee later asks why a colleague earns more, you point to the step within the band (experience, years, performance), not to a negotiation from years ago. That is the difference between a defensible job architecture and a pay scale you draw up yourself in a spreadsheet that collapses the moment someone digs in.

The five grades as they appear in the worked example, with the roles and the band per grade.

What this example shows you

Three things that only become visible once you see a job architecture fully worked out:

1. Grading follows from weighting. You do not set the salary first and then find a group for it, you weigh the work first. That is exactly the reversal the law asks of you.
2. Different work can be of equal value. The work planner and the lead installer do completely different jobs but sit in the same band. That feels odd at first and is precisely the point.
3. The band is your answer to information requests. When an employee asks what comparable colleagues earn, you have a band with a method under it instead of a single loose number.

And then? The structure is done, and the bill arrives

Up to here the example is clean: roles, weights, bands. But the moment you place your real employees into these bands, something happens that the example does not show. Some sit below their band, some above it.

And then the repair turns out to go only one way. Whoever sits below has to come up. Whoever sits above cannot simply be brought down, because you do not lower pay unilaterally. You do not net those two movements against each other: lifting the underpaid is a bill you are going to pay, the overpaid is a risk you carry for years. That is why a first job architecture almost always costs money rather than saving it. Not because the instrument is expensive, but because it makes visible what was already there.

That is not a reason to avoid it, quite the opposite. But it is worth knowing before you start. How to read that bill without talking yourself richer or poorer than you are is in why a first job architecture is a bill, not a saving.

Frequently asked questions

How many roles do I have to weigh?
In principle all of them, because you establish equal value by comparing roles against each other. But you do not have to finish in one go. Start with the roles that hold the most people, so you have the bulk of your workforce justified quickly, and fill in the rest later.

Does this have to go through the works council?
If you have a works council, it has a right of consent on the job evaluation system itself: the method, the rules, the way of weighing. Not on the grading of an individual employee, but on the system as a whole. So build that step into your planning; without consent you cannot simply roll the system out.

Does this apply to my company if I have fewer than 100 employees?
Yes, for the most important part. The duty to be able to justify pay on objective, gender-neutral factors has no size threshold and applies to every employer. What only kicks in above a certain size is the mandatory reporting on pay gaps (which is phased in, larger employers first). The justification itself can be asked of anyone tomorrow.

Can I copy the figures from this example?
No. The figures above are illustrative and apply to a fictional installation company. Your bands depend on your sector, your region and what you pay today. You copy the method, not the numbers.

The bottom line

A job architecture is not complicated once you see it worked out: weigh each role on four factors, let the grading follow from that weighting, and wrap salary bands around it that you can explain. The example above is a small installation company, but the same four steps apply to a garage, an office or a care provider.

Want to see what comes out of your roles? Start with your first role. It is free, so you see the result before you spend anything.