GRA.CE – Lurse’s digital grading tool

Efficient grading systems are essential for the design of compensation systems, attractive talent management and optimal succession planning. With GRA.CE (Grading and Compensation Excellence), we now offer our customers a digital tool that simplifies job architecture design and the entire grading process. It is extremely flexible in the choice of grading models and processes, creates the requirements for market comparisons and is suitable for companies of all sizes. GRA.CE can be used as an app in the sense of ‘software as a service’. The tool can supplement a consultation by Lurse, or be used during ongoing operations. It enables both the development of own job architectures and the use of existing ones.

Grading with GRA.CE – simple and comprehensible

GRA.CE supports the entire grading process, digitizes it and maps it end-to-end: from the design of the job architecture to the definition of a grading model and job evaluation to the assignment of employees by managers or HR.

The grading process is divided into four steps:

1. first, a job architecture based on the existing or planned organizational structures is defined in the form of functional and value-oriented structures.
2. in the next step, the appropriate grading model is identified and shaped by defining new or adapting existing grading criteria.
3. all jobs in the company are then evaluated and assigned to the job architecture. To support this process, individual job descriptions or job families can also be designed or stored in the tool.

In the last step, the employees are assigned to the jobs by HR and the managers.

In the course of a grading process, different assessments may occur. In addition, perspectives and thus assessments on the part of those involved in the process can change. The tool therefore saves all versions of comments, changes and coordination processes. For their part, those with overall responsibility for the job architecture can track and merge these at any time, since the entire history is documented.

Your own job architecture in comparison to the market

For HR managers, it is not only important to classify jobs and functions appropriately in their own job architecture. They also need to know how their company compares to its competitors – for example, in terms of compensation. A requirement for such a comparison is a clear definition of one’s own architecture.

Since GRA.CE can be linked to all common systems and benchmarks, it also makes the correct market assessment of one’s own salary bands very easy: Each job in the company is linked to corresponding reference jobs in various benchmarks. The users can then see at a glance in an Excel table which grade in their own company corresponds to the grade at Lurse or another provider of market data.

If desired, we can advise you on the selection of a suitable grading system and the definition of standard market architectures. Our consultants help you to define the essential criteria or to make necessary adjustments. They coordinate and moderate the allocation processes, prepare decision documents and manage the project across companies, including negotiations with the works council.