Your tour of a Job Profile

Read time: 6 minutes

Hey there!

When you think about the bones of your Workday tenant—the core functions that build each and every module—these should come to mind:

• Security

• Business Processes

• Eligibility & Condition Rules (essentially, boolean logic), and

• Reporting

Master those, and congratulations! 🎉 You’re a lethal Workday problem-solver who can step into almost any module with some research and SME support 😏

But there’s one more element that quietly holds it all together…

An unsung hero tucked inside HCM that we believe is the heartbeat of your entire tenant…

🥁 drumroll please… 🥁

It’s your job profiles.

This HCM staple houses your job architecture in Workday—serving as internal documents that define the key characteristics of a job.

They can hold 20+ variables that help you (buckle up):

• Document a job’s expectations, requirements, and responsibilities

• Provide clear career paths

• Align pay across similar roles

• Drive automation through inclusion/exclusion logic

• Segment your workforce for dynamic reporting

• Stay compliant with external and internal policies

Holy smokes 😳, YES! They do all that.

And today, we’re giving you a high-level overview of how you can put this mighty piece of configuration to work.

The Itinerary

Now, while we’d love to give you the full deep-dive on everything Job Profiles can do… we’ve got limited space (and you’ve got stuff to do 😜).

So for today, we’re focused on the bolded fields below—the important bits to get you going.

Right this way, folks!!!

The Essentials, “Key Details”

To begin, let’s start with the bare necessities 🐻 These inputs live at the top of the job profile under a section called “Key Details”.

Effective Date

First and foremost—literally, this is the first input for the Create and Edit Job Profile tasks—you have the Effective Date. This is the date that determines by when your new Job Profile is available for use or when an edit takes effect!

As a rule of thumb, create new job profiles with a date of 01/01/1900.

Why?

Because in the age of SaaS implementations, this gives you ultimate flexibility. No worker records need to be accounted for 100+ years back—to dust they have returned!

You also need to enter an Effective Date when editing a Job Profile. This is where things can get messy.

If you always make ad hoc edits as of “today”, shared mass updates later on become a headache. If you edit as of 01/01/1900, you overwrite creation history. If you pick an Effective Date earlier than the last edit, your change only applies in that weird in-between window 😵‍💫

To make it easy on your org, edit using agreed upon dates (e.g., 01/01/2025) so you can clearly track changes over time.

Job Profile Name

The Job Profile Name is your second required input. Typically, orgs go with a clear combo of title + level, like HRIS Analyst (HR1).

Whatever structure you choose, consistency is key! A messy naming convention leads to duplicate profiles, poor search results, and confusion when you pull a report or build eligibility rules.

To keep things clean and searchable:

• Stick with either Level 1, 2, 3 or roman numeral I, II, III—don’t mix

• Pick one format for seniority: Senior or Sr., Director or Dir.

• Avoid slashes, hyphens, or symbols unless truly necessary

  (Operations Manager or Manager of Operations > Manager - Operations)

• Skip the cute stuff. The role is a Marketing Analyst, not a Brand Insights Ninja

Document your decisions and lock down who can create/edit Job Profiles, so you don’t end up in the wild west! 🌵

📝 NOTE: In staffing transactions, the Job Title for the worker’s position defaults from the Job Profile Name unless a Default Job Title is specified.

Job Family & Job Family Groups

A Job Family is a way to group related Job Profiles by function, skillset, or area of expertise. It often maps closely to your departments—think Finance, Marketing, Sales, Product, IT, HR, etc. Within each Job Family, you’ll see a variety of Job Profiles that differ by level or specialization (like HR Coordinator vs. HR Business Partner).

A Job Family Group sits one level higher. It bundles multiple Job Families together to give a broader, more strategic view of your org’s roles.

Think of their relationship to each other like a bouquet!

• Job Profiles = the individual petals 🍃

• Job Families = the full flower 🌸

• Job Family Groups = flowers bundled into a bouquet 💐

Job Code

The Job Code you enter becomes the Job Profile’s Reference ID behind the scenes.

Skip it, and Workday auto-generates a Job Code based on the sequence generator selected under Edit Tenant Set Up - HCM > ID Definition for Job Code. That auto-assigned value becomes both the Reference ID and the Job Code.

If you ever update the Job Code, know that it also updates the Reference ID (functional folks, warn your integrations folks)!

Just like any Reference ID, the Job Code must be unique. If you plan to manually assign one, we recommend using a structured acronym that goes from broad to specific, like:

JobFamilyGroup-JobFamily-JobTitle

Example: CORP-HR-HRISAnalyst

The Job Code (Ref ID) can be used as a search key for selecting a Job Profile 😎 See now how that standard acronym comes in handy?

Category Details

Next up: Category Details! 🗂️

While each variable here serves a different purpose, they all classify jobs—intelligently segmenting your workforce to power inclusion/exclusion criteria and build dynamic reporting insights across your tenant.

Management Level

Management Level defines where a Job Profile sits in the leadership hierarchy—from Individual Contributors at the base to CEOs at the top, with layers like Directors and VPs in between.

Tagging each profile with a Management Level helps you assess the health of your org’s structure. You can monitor ratios like execs to mid-level managers (1:4 is a common benchmark) or managers to ICs (often 1:10), and spot red flags like top-heaviness or span-of-control creep before they impact performance.

Job Classifications

Job Classifications are standardized labels that group Job Profiles based on what the role entails and how senior it is—think 2: Professionals, 4: Sales Workers, or 6: Admin Support.

These classifications are mapped to external systems for compliance reporting, like the U.S. EEO-1 for tracking workforce diversity. While Workday lets you customize Classification Groups, most orgs stick to a 1:1 setup aligned with specific regulatory bodies for clean, consistent reporting, like so:

Job Level

Job Level defines how senior a role is based on its scope, complexity, and impact.

Think of it as your org’s measuring stick for career progression—used to compare roles across functions, regardless of title. Some orgs use a single track (e.g. Levels 1–10), while others build domain-specific ladders like IT1–IT10.

Job Levels bring consistency to your internal structure, helping you align pay, plan promotions, and set expectations. Don't mistake this for another input for Management Level—plenty of high-level specialized Individual Contributors exist!

Job Category

Job Category is a “choose your own adventure” input for how to categorize your org 🤓…

You know that workforce analytics chart you keep doing VLOOKUPS for outside Workday?

Well, Job Category may be the perfect slot to put it in.

Common ones we’ve seen are:

• Tech vs. Non-Tech

• Sales vs. Non-Sales

• Revenue-Generating vs. Support

• Client-Facing vs. Internal

You can theoretically have as many options as you want, but orgs tend go for binary options or keep it under 4 selections.

Compensation 💰

Now we’re getting into the core of your relationship with your workforce: compensation.

At the Job Profile level, these variables shape how pay is structured and automated across your tenant.

Pay Rate Type

Pay Rate Type defines how workers are paid—most commonly Hourly or Salary.

On the Job Profile, you set this by country, and you can only assign one Pay Rate Type per country. So if a role exists in the U.S., you have to pick either Hourly or Salary—not both.

This setting flows downstream to the worker’s position and can be used in eligibility rules to auto-assign the right comp plan. It’s a ripple effect! 💧

Job Exempt Status

Job Exempt Status determines whether a role is entitled to overtime pay, based on FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) rules in the U.S.

• Exempt = Not eligible for overtime

• Non-Exempt = Eligible for overtime

In Workday, this “to be or not to be” status shows up as a simple checkbox (plus a country input).

While Exempt usually means Salaried and Non-Exempt means Hourly, there are exceptions—so choose carefully. This status directly affects payroll and time tracking.

Compensation Grades

Compensation Grades group jobs into bands with similar pay ranges—typically defined by a minimum, midpoint, and maximum.

They create structure around hiring, promotions, and pay equity. For example, Grade 10 might range from $60K–$90K, while Grade 15 spans $120K–$180K.

To add more precision, Compensation Grade Profiles let you adjust those ranges based on variables like geo-zones or job family. That way, the same grade can flex across locations (Austin vs. LA) without breaking consistency.

Where the HCM magic starts 🪄

Tucked inside every Job Profile are some of the most powerful levers in your tenant. When used well, they bring order and automation—and influence everything from how you pay your people, how you stay compliant, and how you report on your workforce.

So next time you're configuring a Job Profile, pause and consider the possibilities. Is your Job Architecture dialed in?

From our experience, this is where the HCM magic really begins ✨

Until next time, happy configuring 😊

As always, thank you for being a reader!

We’re celebrating you and your pursuit of a Well Built Workday 🥳 

Until next time!

Ceci & Mia

Co-Founders of Well Built Solutions

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