https://medium.com/bridge-collection/a-design-teams-guide-to-leveling-5de45107a147
A design team with an excellent job leveling system has an easier time retaining the designers they worked so hard to hire.
Practically speaking, leveling can be directly tied to career path, job titles, salary bands, and how valued an employee feels. And more broadly, it supports the everyday expression of company values, which provides the intrinsic motivation and purpose necessary for an individual to feel fulfilled by their work.
All companies need to think about leveling as they grow. But unfortunately there are few best practices for how to level effectively, and little information is publicly shared about the topic. As Rhiannon Bell, NerdWallet’s VP of UX & Design, told us, “I don’t think there’s a gold standard in the design industry. People are making it up on their own.”
And perhaps that’s for good reason. An effective leveling, titling, and performance system must be a unique reflection of a company’s values. A one-size-fits-all process simply doesn’t suffice.
We spoke with design leaders from companies like Inkling, GoPro, PlanGrid, Strava, Gusto, Lookout, Coursera, and NerdWallet, and found that their levels look very different. But here are a few common threads to consider if you are a design team leader, startup executive, or HR leader as you chart a leveling (or re-leveling) plan for your company. Thanks to Coursera, we’ve also included a special look into the leveling process and new rubrics of the 5-year-old company.
The best way to level a design organization is to do it at the same time as the rest of the company, with other teams like product, engineering, and marketing. And if a simultaneous leveling process isn’t possible, make sure to calibrate your levels to the existing levels of other teams. Leveling isn’t done in a vacuum, even if it’s just for your department: be transparent with your team’s level descriptions, get buy-in from stakeholders outside of the design team, and make sure you’re philosophically aligned with the rest of the company.
There are a few practical reasons for this. When levels across departments match one another’s scope of influence on product and people, it clarifies roles, suggests natural counterparts, and brings together employees from different disciplines to take ownership over shared problems and solve them together. It also allows for easier lateral moves: for example, a product manager transitioning to design, or a designer moving to engineering, would have an easier time finding the right role if scope and career paths are aligned.
Companies usually appoint a dedicated central leader from their talent / HR team to spearhead the leveling process for one or more departments. Managers of teams, such as design managers, are involved in creating job levels that fit individual roles. Executives and talent leads sign off on the levels and make sure they’re calibrated across teams. In Coursera’s recent leveling process, they hired a full-time Director of Learning and Development (who previously led Organizational Development at Google) to partner with their head of People Ops and run most of the leveling process. They also hired a compensation consultant to define compensation ranges, who didn’t participate in defining specific levels but was involved in the overall process.
