Job Functions & Families

What are job functions and job families?

In IU’s job framework, roles (jobs) are organized under specific job functions and job families. These building blocks group similar and/or related roles.

  • Job functions: The largest category for the classification of related jobs—it contains related job families. Some examples of job functions include: Information Technology, Finance, or Student Services.
  • Job families: Sub-categories inside a job function. These jobs perform similar types of work and may require similar skills, knowledge, and/or expertise. Job families are determined by the job function that contains them. For example, the Finance job function may contain Accounting, Payroll, or Tax job families.
  • Roles/Jobs: All roles, or jobs, are contained within a job family. There may be many different roles, as well as roles in different career structures and at different career levels.

Here is a general outline that uses a narrow range of selections from IU’s finance job function as an example:

Example of finance job function and related job families
FamilyAccounting & TaxFinancial AdministrationBursarPayroll
RoleAccountant, Tax SpecialistBanking Services Courier, Financial Administration CoordinatorBursar Assistant, Campus BursarPayroll Coordinator, Payroll Leader

How the framework can help your career

Organizing roles by job functions and job families makes it easier to see how roles are related to one another across the university, revealing career opportunities.

An individual could have a role within the Finance job function and pursue career evolution in a different job family within the Finance job function. Since both roles are within the Finance job function, it is likely that some skills are transferable between the two different job families. (For example, a role within the Procurement family may have skills directly relatable to a role within the Payroll family.)