A glossary of terms for Grow
Many companies use different terms for job leveling, competencies, and career mapping. Below are key terms Lattice uses to help build your employees' career development roadmap.
Key terms
- Track: Set clear expectations for each role within your organization and define what it means for an employee to be successful in their role
- Track Level: The columns of expectations added to a Grow track. A Grow track must have one or more track levels (i.e., columns in the track). Track levels have a title that describes the role and/or job title (e.g., Software Engineer I, Senior Software Engineer, etc.) and a set of defined expectations per competency for the given level. Each Grow track level can be tied to a job architecture job level by aligning the track to job architecture. When a track is aligned to job architecture, then the first column (track level) will be aligned to the first job level (i.e. IC1).
- Competency: Skills or qualities that employees need to embody to succeed in their roles
- Competency Theme: Themes that allow you to organize competencies in a track under a single theme
- Expectation: A description of what someone in that role needs to do to fulfill each competency
- Track groups: Groupings of related tracks which allow employees to visualize relationships between tracks
- Growth Area: A process to help employees get from where they are now to where they want to be
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Job Architecture: An industry term used to refer to the framework or structure that aligns levels, people, and jobs across a company and is used to determine comp bands and competency frameworks consistently across a company
- Job Level: The level at which an employee is placed within their job type (e.g., an employee with a job level of IC1 would have a job type of Individual Contributor and be placed at level one of that job type)
- Job type: The type of career path that an employee can be on (e.g., Individual Contributor, Management, Professional, Support, etc.)
- Job function: The overarching type of work or "job" done by a group of employees. (e.g., a group of employees performs the job functions of Product Design, Software Engineering, Recruiting, or People Operations. While employees within these job functions may have a specific title or role which indicates their level or specialty, they are grouped under the umbrella of the overarching job function)
- Individual development plan: Individual development plans are created collaboratively between employees and their managers or supervisors that define the employee's short- and long-term career goals and put a plan in place to achieve them.
- Career vision: Long-term career planning exercises that direct reports share with their managers
Additional terms
- Job type abbreviation: An abbreviation of the job type (usually 1-3 letters). Prefixed to a number to indicate an employee's job type and job level in tandem. (e.g. IC1, IC2, IC3 or M3, M4, M5)
- Aligned track: A published OR unpublished Grow track that has been aligned to job architecture in Lattice. Meaning, an admin has selected both the job type and job function of the track and saved the selection by clicking "Align track".
- Unaligned track: A published OR unpublished Grow track that has never been or is not currently aligned to job architecture in Lattice. Meaning the track has no selected job type or job function.
- Aligned employee: An employee in Lattice with an assigned job type and job function and optionally an assigned job level.
- Unaligned employee: An employee in Lattice who does not have an assigned job type or job function.