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exIQtive describes what’s expected of your employees with a small set of building blocks. This page defines each one and the rules that connect them.

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Employee

An employee is any individual who works in your organization. Each employee has a first and last name, and optionally a profile picture. Employees are the people you’re building readiness for: they receive responsibilities through their positions, and their readiness is what the whole system measures.

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Organizational objects

exIQtive uses six building blocks, collectively called organizational objects: Positions, Roles, and Responsibilities connect in a chain: you attach Responsibilities to Roles (or directly to a Position), attach Roles to Positions, and assign Employees to Positions. Everything flows from that chain automatically. Departments, Job Families, and Job Categories classify positions; they don’t change which responsibilities an employee receives.

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Organizational object codes

Every organizational object (Position, Role, Responsibility, Department, Job Family, and Job Category) has a unique numeric code, shown as something like #345. Use these codes to search for and refer to specific objects precisely, which helps in larger organizations where names can be similar across teams. The rules for codes are the same for all six object types:
  • System-generated. You never choose a code. exIQtive assigns the next number when you create the object.
  • Shared numbering. All six types draw from one counter per account, so no two objects in your account share a code, whatever their type. A Department and a Role can’t both be #345.
  • Permanent. A code doesn’t change when you rename, move, or retire the object, or when its status changes.
  • Never reused. A code is never given to another object, even after the original is retired or archived. Deleting a draft object doesn’t release its code, so you may see gaps in the numbering. That’s expected.
  • Your account only. Each account has its own numbering, so another account can also have a #345.
Job Family levels don’t have codes. A level is identified by its family and its position in the family’s ladder.

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Position

A Position is a specific job in your organization, such as HR Manager, Team Leader, or Barista. It’s the entry point for everything: when you assign an employee to a position, they automatically receive all the roles and responsibilities that position includes.

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Position validity

A position is valid when every role attached to it is valid (each has at least one active responsibility). You can’t assign an employee to an invalid position; fix it first by making sure every attached role has at least one active responsibility.

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Position rules

  • One employee can hold a position at a time, but multiple employees can be preparing for it
  • An unoccupied position is called vacant
  • Positions get responsibilities through their roles, and you can also attach a responsibility directly to a position
Example: ACME Corporation has positions for CEO, CFO, VP of Manufacturing, and Assistant to the CEO. John Doe holds the CEO position. When he was assigned, he automatically received all the roles and responsibilities that come with it.

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Assignment to position

When you assign an employee to a position, you give the assignment an Effective On date (when it starts) and, when you later relieve them, an Effective By date (when it ends). The Effective By date must be later than the Effective On date. You can’t assign an employee to an invalid position.

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Commitment

Every assignment has a commitment level that describes the employee’s relationship to the position: Any number of employees can be preparing for a position, but only one can hold it (Primary) at a time.

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Role

A Role is a named group of responsibilities. You define a role once (for example, “Customer Service” or “Financial Reporting”), attach the relevant responsibilities, and then attach the role to as many positions as need it. When the role changes, every position using it picks up the change automatically. We sometimes use Hat as a synonym for Role, as in “wearing the Customer Service hat”.

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Role validity

A role is valid when it has at least one active responsibility attached. A role with no active responsibilities is invalid, and any position it’s attached to becomes invalid too, so you can’t assign employees to that position until the role is fixed.

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Role rules

  • Each role has a unique name in your account
  • A role must be attached to a position before employees can receive its responsibilities
  • The same role can be attached to any number of positions
Example: The Technician position includes the “Technical Support” role, which has two responsibilities: Troubleshoot and resolve issues and Provide customer assistance. Any employee assigned to the Technician position automatically gets both.

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Responsibility

A Responsibility is a specific area of work an employee must be able to perform, and be accountable for performing well. It’s not a task list; it’s the unit of work that exIQtive inspects, certifies, and measures readiness against. Every responsibility has a clearly defined scope: what the person is trusted to do, and the standard their performance is measured by. That standard is captured in the Inspection Protocol, which the Architect for the responsibility creates and maintains.

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Responsibility rules

  • Responsibilities reach employees through their position, either through a role or attached directly to the position; you never assign a responsibility directly to an employee
  • The same responsibility can be attached to any number of roles
  • Each responsibility has a unique name in your account

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Department

A Department is an organizational unit that groups positions into a hierarchy mirroring your company’s structure, such as Company → Division → Team. Departments can be nested to any depth and can contain positions, sub-departments, or both. A position belongs to only one department at a time. Departments are for navigation and filtering. They don’t change which responsibilities an employee receives. See Departments.

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Job Family

A Job Family groups positions by discipline, such as Engineering, Sales, Finance, or Operations. Each job family has an ordered set of levels that represent seniority within that discipline, from level 1 at the bottom of the ladder upward. A position is assigned to exactly one job family and exactly one level within it. To move a position to a different family, remove its current family first, then assign the new one. See Job families.

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Job Category

A Job Category groups positions that represent work of equal value, regardless of discipline. Where a job family answers “what kind of work is this, and how senior?”, a job category answers “how much is this work worth?”. The two are independent, so a position’s family and category don’t have to move together. See Job categories.
Job Families and Job Categories are turned on or off separately in Account → Settings → Configuration → Jobs. Both are off by default, and only Owners and Co-Owners can change the setting. Turning one off hides it but keeps your data, which reappears when you turn it back on.

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Assignment importance

Every responsibility assignment has an importance level that controls how much it contributes to the employee’s Readiness. Use it to reflect how critical each responsibility is:

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FTE (full-time equivalent)

FTE is how exIQtive measures an employee’s availability and a position’s capacity. 1.0 FTE is a full-time employee (typically 40 hours per week); 0.5 FTE is part-time (20 hours per week). When you assign an employee to a position, their FTE availability fills the position’s FTE capacity:
  • Employee vacancy = Employee availability − Current allocation
  • Position vacancy = Position capacity − Current allocation
You can assign an employee to a position only when their vacancy is less than or equal to the position’s vacancy. For example, a full-time employee (1.0 FTE) can’t be assigned to a part-time position (0.5 FTE); their availability is too large to fit.

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Common questions

Check the full chain: the position needs active roles attached, those roles need active responsibilities, and the position itself needs to be Active (not Draft or Retired). If any step is broken, responsibilities won’t flow through. Start from the position and work down to find the gap.
A Role is the container; a Responsibility is the actual unit of work inside it. Roles let you attach a whole bundle of related responsibilities to a position at once instead of adding them one by one. Change a role and every position using it updates automatically.
Yes, responsibilities are reusable. If “Health and Safety Compliance” belongs in three roles, attach it to all three. If an employee gets the same responsibility through multiple roles on the same position, they receive it once per role; each role generates its own independent assignment.
They can be assigned: their 0.5 FTE fills half of the position’s 1.0 FTE capacity. The remaining 0.5 FTE of vacancy can be filled by another employee, and exIQtive shows it so you know the position isn’t fully covered.
At least one of its attached roles has no active responsibilities. Find that role and either attach an active responsibility to it or detach it from the position. Once every attached role has at least one active responsibility, the position is valid and you can assign employees again.

Positions

Create and manage positions.

Roles

Create and manage roles.

Managing responsibilities

Create and manage responsibilities.

Employee/position assignments

Assign and relieve employees.

Organizational tree

How the objects connect.

Departments

Group positions into departments.
Last modified on October 14, 2026