Every time I scope a piece of work — rewriting position descriptions, mapping capability frameworks, aligning job families — someone asks the same question.
“What line item should we put this under?”
And 9 times out of 10, the answer they’re expecting is: HR.
But that’s the first mistake.
Because the work I do — the work WorkLuma is built for — doesn’t just touch HR.
It touches compliance. Legal. Operations. Safety. Workforce planning. Sometimes tech. Sometimes even audit and risk.
Yet it gets budgeted like it’s admin.
That mismatch creates problems before the project even starts.
Wrong stakeholders. Wrong expectations. Wrong measures of success.
So here’s the real answer: this work belongs across multiple cost centres.
And if you’re serious about getting it right, you need to treat it like a strategic infrastructure investment, not a departmental task.
This Isn’t “HR Admin” — It’s Risk, Strategy, and Ops
Let’s break down where the value actually lands:
1. People & Culture / HR
Yes, of course it lives here.
Clarity of roles, job architecture, PDs, and frameworks are essential for hiring, onboarding, development, retention, and internal mobility.
But that’s just one view.
2. Legal & Compliance
A clear, up-to-date PD is your first line of defence in performance management, restructures, and Fair Work or WHS disputes.
If your PDs are vague or outdated, your legal footing is weak — no matter how good your policies are.
This is risk mitigation.
The kind legal teams should be backing, not just reviewing after the fact.
3. WHS / Health & Safety
Psychosocial hazards are now embedded in WHS codes.
One of the clearest controls? Role clarity.
If your PD doesn’t reflect the real demands, expectations, and boundaries of a job, you’re out of step with safety legislation.
That’s not a hypothetical. That’s a liability.
This work reduces risk exposure. It should be funded like it.
4. Business Operations / COO Office
You can’t run a business efficiently if roles are misaligned, duplicated, bloated, or poorly scoped.
Clarity of who does what, how it’s structured, and what capability is needed is a core operating discipline — not a people “nice to have.”
If operations wants to scale without chaos, this work belongs in their budget too.
5. Strategy / Transformation
If you’re going through a restructure, merger, tech implementation, or org redesign — you need PD and capability work baked in.
It underpins operating models. It maps talent to new org shapes. It helps align current reality with future design.
Strategy leaders who skip this step regret it. Usually six months too late.
So Where Should the Budget Sit? Shared. Anchored. Strategic.
Here’s what I recommend to every exec team I work with:
1. Anchor the work in a strategic initiative.
Don’t treat it as a standalone HR clean-up.
Tie it to a real driver: legal risk reduction, restructure, capability uplift, or WHS compliance.
That frames the value correctly from day one.
2. Share the cost across 2–3 functions.
If HR pays the whole bill, the work gets boxed in.
If legal, safety, or ops chip in, they’ve got skin in the game — and the work lands better.
This also opens the door to more useful conversations about what clarity really means across functions.
3. Treat it like infrastructure, not software.
You wouldn’t question the need to fund secure IT systems.
This is the same logic: clean job architecture is part of a modern organisation’s foundation.
And like infrastructure, it pays off in risk reduction, scalability, and clarity.
4. Don’t call it “PD rewrite project” in the budget.
Call it:
- Workforce Clarity Initiative
- Capability Alignment Project
- WHS & Risk Control Upgrade
- Strategic Role Clarity Review
Names matter. They shape how stakeholders see the value.
I’ve seen too many good projects get killed at the funding stage because someone thought “cleaning up PDs” wasn’t worth prioritising.
It’s not cleanup.
It’s architecture.
It’s governance.
It’s risk protection.
It’s the thing people reach for when things go wrong — and the thing that makes everything work better when things go right.
So stop throwing it into the HR bucket.
Fund it like the multi-functional, high-leverage work that it is.
Because if you don’t?
You’ll be paying for it anyway.
You’ll just be paying through disputes, turnover, confusion, and rework.