‘We are entering a period of ‘talent density’ where variations in skills are greater than ever,' says expert explaining why job titles are about skills not status
When a global player like Deloitte rewrites job titles for more than 180,000 people, it signals changes that will not stay south of the border for long.
For Canadian employers, the consulting giant’s overhaul of its U.S. job architecture is a tangible example of how artificial intelligence and shifting work demands are pushing organizations to revisit hierarchies, titles and career paths.
According to an internal presentation shared with employees in January, Deloitte told its U.S. workforce that “all professionals will receive a new title that we will start to use internally and externally on June 1, 2026.”
The changes apply across all U.S. divisions and affect about 181,500 employees as of May 31, 2025.
AI disruption and the end of linear career ladders
In the name of “modernizing” for its “business of tomorrow”, Deloitte is also adding a new leadership layer, according to the same presentation.
On top of the established partner, principal and managing director group (known internally as PPMD), the firm is introducing a new category of “leaders” with alpha-numerical categorizations, which Deloitte says will better match employees with clients who are “demanding new skills and capabilities.”
Simon Blanchette, a lecturer at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, says this problem of modernization will be familiar to Canadian employers grappling with automation, new platforms and changing customer demands.
“Consistently, job titles don't always reflect what the jobs were five years ago,” Blanchette says.
“The work has shifted a lot. For example, if you work in HR these days, you oftentimes work in learning and development as well, which wasn't necessarily the case not such a long time ago … sometimes yes, titles need to be reflecting that.”
For employers, that misalignment becomes more visible as AI and new tools change the mix of tasks in a role. Work evolves faster than static titles and career ladders, leaving employees doing combinations of duties that were never reflected in the original posting.
Hierarchy, lattices and new leadership layers
In Deloitte’s case, the firm explicitly describes its current structure as “outdated.” According to Josh Bersin, founder of Josh Bersin & Associates, which is now Bersin by Deloitte, the move signals a shift in the consulting business as a whole, not just Deloitte’s own practices.
“The business consulting industry is actually flat to shrinking, because AI automates so much of what they do,” Bersin says, adding that, for example, “Galileo is the equivalent of a 30- to 40-year expert and much more… There’s nothing wrong with doing this, but it tells me Deloitte now realizes they need to be more like IBM and Accenture and TCS and less like McKinsey to grow."
For Canadian employers, the question may be less about removing levels and more about how people move through them. Blanchette suggests moving away from a rigid ladder to something more like a lattice.
“You would still get promoted, but sometimes there's going to be side steps,” he says.
“Because as we're integrating AI, suddenly it creates new roles … so new titles are actually a good way to represent the fact that skills are morphing.”
According to Blanchette, large-scale title changes should only follow careful analysis. As an example, he describes working with an organization that set up a dedicated leadership layer to manage AIrelated transformation.
“They picked two senior managers from two different departments that would be impacted more by AI, and they … put them in charge of the transformation and implementation,” he says. Eventually, their titles were changed to reflect those new responsibilities, he says, which he describes as “Pretty much creating an entire plan of what the new reality would be.”
Skills-based pay bands versus career ladders
As Bersin puts it, skills-based job titles reflect skill level rather than tenure.
“A skills-based structure can be hierarchical, but it fundamentally isn’t,” he explains.
“Rather than call someone a senior engineer because they have 20 years of experience, they could be promoted to ‘senior’ or ‘specialist 2’ based on their deep skills and proven capabilities, not their tenure. So from the outside it may look hierarchical, but the promotion is based on proven skills, not tenure.”
Bersin goes on to explain that a skills-based system also allows two employees in the same job to be paid differently.
Rather than the traditional system of being paid by level in bands of tenure, he says, “in a skills-based company, a ‘10X engineer’ may earn three to four times [more than] one of their peers, and their ‘band’ may be way higher. We are entering a period of ‘talent density’ where variations in skills are greater than ever, and we have to adjust pay accordingly.”
For employers attempting a re-map of their own workforce, Bersin advises simplicity. Job titles should be a representation of skills but not a narrow specialization, to enable employees to move freely within the organization.
“There are going to be many new roles: managing agents, building agents, caring for content, leading governance teams, validating quality, monitoring activity, AI architecture, and tons more,” he says.
“As these job titles get settled, many of them will become standardized, so I advise keeping the titles as general as possible so you don’t end up with a mess that can’t adapt as the external job market settles into these new roles.”
‘Purposeful mapping’ of skills to redefine roles
Any shift in labels or levels will likely prompt questions about status, pay, workload and future prospects, Blanchette says. Having a clear story that connects titles to concrete skills and tasks will be a critical part of managing that transition.
He describes a broader “purposeful mapping” process, a cornerstone of which is granular engagement with employees to break down “every single job that you have” into realistic skills and tasks: “Essentially, do an autopsy of the organization, the structure. Determine what will be changing, what needs to be added, and after that, you just take the pieces, and you rebuild.”
As hierarchies evolve, employee perceptions and reaction to changes will present challenges, but as Blanchette points out, employer assurances will only resonate if employees can see how the new labels connect to their real work.
“If people’s jobs are changing, it can be unsettling … you need to actually make sure that you communicate, a lot,” Blanchette says, adding that involving employees directly can reduce uncertainty. “The worst thing that you can do is [say], ‘Your job will change, but we don't exactly know what it will mean.’ That's a great way to make me freak out.”
Bersin agrees that any redesign of titles and levels will come with friction; his advice is pragmatic but also emphasizes the importance of communication and intention behind the changes.
“When there’s a change many employees get ‘leveled’ into a slot they don’t like, so for the first few years there can be a lot of arguing about what level people should be,” Bersin says.
“If the company has good criteria for promotion this should settle down after a few performance cycles.”
