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The City of Portland, Oregon

Office of Management & Finance

Bureau of Human Resources

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Phone: 503-823-3572

Benefits Line: 503-823-6031

1120 SW 5th Ave, Room 987, Portland, OR 97204

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Job Framework FAQ

Updated 5/27/2021

1. What’s a job framework?  

The job framework is the overall organization of jobs. It refers to the infrastructure of jobs within an organization. It is a sound easy-to-use system for placing jobs with comparable work characteristics into categories. The job framework components include job families and sub-families.

 2. What are comparable work characteristics?  

Comparable work means jobs that require substantially similar knowledge, skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions in the performance of work.

 3. What are job families and sub-families?  

A job family is made up of jobs that belong to a common field, functional area, or general vocational area. Each non-represented job at the City will belong to a job family, which is determined by the answers to the following questions:

- Why does the position exist?  

- What are the most important responsibilities in the position?  

- What responsibilities take up the most time?  

A job sub-family consists of jobs within a larger job family. Job sub-families describe specialized functions. Each job is mapped to a sub-family within a job family.

 4. Why do we need a job framework?  

The Oregon Equal Pay Act requires employers to do a pay equity analysis every 3 years to ensure employees who are in the same classification and performing work of comparable character are paid equitably. Creating a job framework will assist the City in completing pay equity reviews that are consistent, equitable, and transparent.

 5. How is this different from our current job classification structure 

Classification specification determine the level and correlating compensation range for each job classification. The job framework groups positions into job family cohorts to allow us to easily identify comparable work when conducting pay equity analyses.

We are not changing job classifications.  We are slotting them into job families and sub-families to better identify comparable work to assist in conducting an equal pay analysis.

6. Will this impact my pay?  

No. The creation of a job framework and slotting into job families and sub-families will not create a change in pay or change employee pay ranges.