Glossary, Workforce Mapping

This glossary provides key terms and names from Pearson's Workforce Mapping platform to help your understanding of its data and features.

 

API

API is the acronym for application programming interface — a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other.

APIs are an accessible way to extract and share data within and across organizations.

 

Estimated Employees

(As seen in Workforce Snapshot, Top 10 skills based on employee count.)

This represents the estimated number of employees, grouped by Ontology Occupation Category, who likely possess certain skills across the entire organization. The calculation involves summing the probabilities of each employee having a specific skill. For example, if ten (10) employees each have a 50% chance of knowing Python, we estimate around five (5) employees with Python skills in the ‘Engineering’ category. This figure gives us an idea of how widespread certain skills are among our workforce.

 

Internal Employee ID

The identification (ID) that a business system assigned to their employees.

 

Internal Employee Level

Employee Levels are categories of authority and/or salary levels of positions in an organization.

Internal refers to the source of the data: Pearson’s client’s own Employee Levels.

Levelling refers to a company's method of standardizing employees' scope of assumed ability and responsibility. Levels are often used to establish compensation bands and set appropriate expectations for the impact of work of an individual. Generally, established companies have well-defined leveling systems meant to express the level of value the candidate brings to the organization (e.g. the higher the level, the greater the impact).

Typical job levels may be defined as:

• Executive or senior management
• Middle management
• First-level management
• Intermediate or experienced (senior staff)
• Entry-level

 

Job Title

A job title is typically a specific and formal name given to a paid role within an organization.

 

Job Family

A job family is a group of jobs that involve similar work and require similar training, skills, knowledge, and expertise The family structure is based on function and not organizational structure.

A Sub-family is a smaller group of jobs within a larger job family.

 

Model Confidence Level

Pearson uses a multi-faceted occupation mapping approach. Client job titles and job information are automatically mapped using a custom machine learning algorithm. The model then designates three (3) confidence levels:

• High
• Medium
• Low

 

Occupation

An occupation is a cluster of very similar jobs with similar attributes and assigned tasks.  

An occupation could for example be an “Accounting Manager” and would include the jobs of “Accounts Receivable Manager” and “Accounts Payable Team Leader”. Those two jobs are similar enough in education requirements, tasks, and attributes, to be grouped into one occupation. 

 

Occupation Mapping

This is a product feature (or graphical user interface) of the Pearson Workforce Product that maps Pearson's client employee job data to the Pearson Occupation Ontology. 

 

Ontology

A standardized framework for categorising and defining data or concepts. The purpose of an ontology is to create consistent meaning so that source data can be accurately analyzed and modelled, regardless of its source or initial formatting.

See Pearson Occupation Ontology for more information on our proprietary Ontology.

 

Ontology Occupation

This is the occupation name (or grouping of similar individual jobs performed with minor variations) used by the Pearson Occupation Ontology.

 

Ontology Occupation Code

This code maps your job title (from Pearson’s client organization) to a match in the Pearson Occupation Ontology.

 

Ontology Occupation Category

Occupation groups that are classifications of jobs that may share similar tasks.

Pearson Ontology has 24 Occupation Categories.

 

Ontology Occupation Description

A concise outline that describes a job role by its key tasks and skills within an organized framework. This helps in career planning, hiring, and training.

 

Ontology Occupation Level

Each occupation is further split into levels:                  

1. Individual Contributors: are employees who are not responsible for overseeing the work of others, but rather contribute to the organization through their own personal work output. They possess specialised skills and knowledge in their domains.
   
   There are 4 levels:
   • Level 1, Intern, Graduate, Junior, Associate, Apprentice, sometimes Assistant
     This level typically represents individuals at the beginning of their careers or in entry-level roles. They are gaining experience and learning the ropes, often working under close supervision.
   • Level 2,  Mid
     Mid-level individual contributors have gained some experience and possess expanded skills and responsibilities within their roles. They work with some degree of independence, handling more complex projects or tasks.
   • Level 3, Senior
     At this level, individuals are highly experienced and bring a depth of knowledge to their work. They are often relied upon for their technical expertise and may mentor or guide less experienced teammates.
   • Level 4, Principal, Expert, Lead
     At the highest level of individual contributors, these employees are recognized experts in their fields. They may be involved in strategic projects, lead functional teams, and contribute significantly to decision-making processes.
     
2. Managers: hold positions of authority and are responsible for directing and overseeing the work of Individual Contributors or other lower-level Managers. They set objectives, coordinate teams, allocate resources, and often have a say in hiring and firing decisions. Their role involves a balance of executing tasks assigned by executives and facilitating the work of those they supervise
   • Level 1, Supervisor, Team Lead
     As the first level of management, individuals have responsibilities over a small team. They also have their own functional tasks to perform, their roles often include scheduling, delegating, and overseeing work for their direct reports.
   • Level 2, Manager
     These managers are responsible for larger teams, often overseeing the work of Level 1 managers. They may also control a functional area of the business and are involved in tactical decision-making.
   • Level 3, Senior Manager, Director
     These individuals manage multiple teams or departments. They have strategic responsibilities, making impactful decisions and providing direction.
   • Level 4, Head of VP, President
     These leaders are typically responsible for an entire organization, region, or major business unit, and  may have several directors reporting to them.
3. Executives: hold the highest level of management in an organization. They typically have broad, strategic responsibilities, including setting the organization's direction and making high-stakes decisions. They work closely with the board of directors and other top-level executives to create policies, establish corporate objectives, and ensure financial performance and growth.
   • Level 1, Chief
     The following image shows an indicative split of the seniorities. Each client usually has their own seniority framework and title prerequisites. The levels are assigned relatively to the client’s naming structure.

The following image shows an indicative split of the seniorities. Each client usually has their own seniority framework and title prerequisites. The levels are assigned relatively to the client’s naming structure, and are determined by job title, experience, skills and responsibilities.

See also Ontology Occupation Stream.

 

Ontology Occupation Stream

Each occupation is classified into one stream. This is predetermined and cannot be changed. The ontology uses 3 ‘streams’ based on common characteristics we use to model our seniority levels. The streams are:

• Individual Contributors (IC) - These are specialist roles with no people management responsibility. E.g., Accountant, Plumber, Surgeon.
• Managers (M) - These are roles that manage people (but are not executives).
  Can be a generic manager role such as an Operations Manager or area specific such as an Actuarial Manager or a Strategy Manager.
• Executives (E) - These are Managers of managers with overall organizational responsibilities, reporting to the CEO or to the board.  

See also Ontology Occupation Level.

 

Organization Layer 1

This is the top layer of your organization’s hierarchy.

• e.g. Organization/Company Level
• In a 3 layer organization hierarchy, this is the highest level in the hierarchy, representing the entire company or organization.
• We collect this data to compare workforce impacts by organizational structure.

 

Organization Layer 2

This is the next layer below Organization Layer 1 of your organization’s hierarchy.

• e.g. Department/Function/Division
• These terms are used to describe a smaller, more specialized group of people within a department or function. Teams are typically focused on a specific aspect of the department’s overall responsibilities.
• We collect this data to compare workforce impacts by organizational structure

 

Organization Layer 3

This is the lowest layer of your organization’s hierarchy. e.g. the lowest denominator organizational unit or level or segment.

• It is usually the employee level or the lowest team level.
• e.g. Team/Unit/Group
  • This is the specific role that an individual fills within their team or department.
    Job titles can be used to further delineate the hierarchy within a team, and could be related to seniority, expertise, or management responsibility.
• We collect this data to compare workforce impacts by organizational structure.

 

Pearson Occupation Ontology

Pearson Occupation Ontology is founded on a core set of standardised job taxonomies, including ESCO, O*NET, ISCO, ANZCO and NOC as well as available job-ad data.

Pearson Occupation Ontology is proprietary and world-leading. Pearson’s in-house data scientists look at the skills, attributes and tasks of jobs and use regularly updated job ads data to ensure the model stays current.

• Knowledge graph of 5,000+ occupations (with levelling)
• 55,000 normalised job titles linked to occupations
• 9000+ unique skills that can be associated with a job
• 26,620 discrete work tasks that make up each occupation
• 10 millions job ads processed each month
• 312 Million rows of employee data from global census
• ILO labour data to capture 2 billion of world’s workforce
• 2.4 million rows of client employee data
• 16 major emerging technologies — categorised into 3 areas: automation, augmentation, addition

Pearson Occupation Ontology will enable you to do workforce mapping and job matching in a more accurate and structured way.

 

Skill

A discrete set of abilities, knowledge and/or competencies that is required to deliver the expected outcomes of a given job.  

 

Skill Domain

Previously ‘Skill Area’.

A collection of similar skills that are categorized into a group based on their similarities and relationships. These groups are defined according to ESCO skills, O*NET job attributes and CRICOS education frameworks. A skill area can be seen as a grouping of more actionable skills.

 

Skill, Future-proof

Future-proof skills are those with a high future-fit score, placing them in the top 15% of skills in our skills ontology. The future-fit score of each skill is determined by evaluating three key components:

• Anti-Automation: Measures the importance of a skill in making an occupation less susceptible to automation, ensuring its relevance in the face of technology impact.
• Predicted Long-Term Trend: Analyses labor market data to predict the demand for the skill over the next 15 years, providing a forward-looking perspective on its longevity.
• Historical Short-Term Trend: Examines recent job ad data over the past 1 to 3 years to assess the current importance of the skill.

Together, these components provide a comprehensive assessment of a skill’s potential to remain valuable and resilient in the future labor market.

 

Skill, In-demand

In-demand skills encompass the top 10% of skills currently required in the job market, as well as the top 10% of skills that are trending upwards. These skills are identified through the analysis of job ad data, updated quarterly for each country. Overall, about 15% of the skills in our skills ontology are classified as in-demand within each of the 4 countries (US, AU, UK, CA), reflecting both the immediate needs and evolving trends in the job market.

 

Task

An exact piece of work undertaken in a job. Different groupings of tasks make up each job in the Pearson Occupation Ontology.