3 advices on promotion in the office politics way

was moved to a Senior level of my exist­ing title but was told that HR did not want to cre­ate this new “Senior” title in the HR sys­tem. I was also told I should go ahead and get busi­ness cards with the new title. My VP has not men­tioned this pro­mo­tion to any­one on our team but the VP’s boss has intro­duced me with the “Senior” title to oth­ers in the com­pany. I sus­pect the VP does not want to be ques­tioned by my peers as to why they were not offered this type of promotion.

Some­thing doesn’t feel right. If I used the new title on busi­ness cards and email com­mu­ni­ca­tions or post it on my LinkedIn pro­file, it is sure to gen­er­ate ques­tions. Gen­er­ally I know the right thing to do and don’t spend time on this type of issue (I pre­fer to spend time adding value to the com­pany) but this is dis­tract­ing my focus and the ambi­gu­ity is uncom­fort­able for me. So, what do you think? Go with it and use the new title or keep the old title, put the new one out of my mind and enjoy the new-found cash?

Kudos on obvi­ously being a smart and effec­tive employee ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing value to your employer. No won­der your boss wants to reward you! How­ever, your well-intentioned boss has gone rogue, plac­ing you in a no-man’s land right between your col­leagues and the organization’s com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram. No won­der you’re uncomfortable!

Bona fide Promotions

Bona fide pro­mo­tions are events to be cel­e­brated and com­mu­ni­cated. Bona fide pro­mo­tions also have three ele­ments: a new title, a higher rate of pay and new job duties requir­ing greater skills and demand­ing more respon­si­bil­ity. You men­tion only two ele­ments: the new “senior” title and the salary increase. So, if your duties haven’t changed, it isn’t sur­pris­ing that there’s no cor­re­spond­ing job title in the HR system.

As you report to a VP who reports to a VP, I sur­mise that your employer is fairly large and prob­a­bly has a for­mal job eval­u­a­tion process as part of its com­pen­sa­tion pro­gram. Com­pen­sa­tion pro­grams have a lot in com­mon with ice­bergs: most employ­ees see just the tip and aren’t aware of the sig­nif­i­cant body of work that goes on behind the scenes to cre­ate, main­tain and admin­is­ter pay plans that are exter­nally com­pet­i­tive, inter­nally fair and equi­table, and legally defensible.

A pay plan view from the 100,000 foot level:

Work func­tions are ana­lyzed, given a job title, placed in a job fam­ily, bench­marked to salary data, and then assigned a pay grade.

Per­haps a sports anal­ogy may help illus­trate this point. Pro foot­ball teams have three quar­ter­backs: the starter, the back-up and the third string. All three posi­tions have a clearly defined place in the work hier­ar­chy. Each job holder knows what’s expected of him. Indi­vid­u­als are recruited into one of the three titles and can move up, down or even out of the posi­tion. Pay rates are different.

Imag­ine the con­fu­sion that would be cre­ated if a coach wanted to call his third string quar­ter­back a “senior third string quar­ter­back” because the incum­bent works hard, does a good job and shows promise of being high poten­tial tal­ent. The job titling sys­tem isn’t set up to reward good performance.

Your sit­u­a­tion is no dif­fer­ent. If your job duties haven’t changed, what your boss did for you was a merit pay increase, not a pro­mo­tion. So you were right to place the word pro­mo­tion in quo­ta­tion marks in your let­ter. I’m impressed by your per­cep­tive­ness in rec­og­niz­ing the con­flict that would be stirred up amongst your peers should you go pub­lic with the new title. I also under­stand your strug­gle with the ambi­gu­ity of the sit­u­a­tion, think­ing that pro­mo­tions are good news that should be shared, not kept under wraps.

Now that we’ve explored the likely sys­tem sce­nario, let’s explore your next steps. I think a face-to-face dis­cus­sion with your boss is what’s next. As this issue is sev­eral months old and is still alive in your mind, you need clo­sure before the sit­u­a­tion begins to neg­a­tively impact your per­for­mance and/or your rela­tion­ship with your boss.

Con­sider these 3 options…

There are three options you and your boss should eval­u­ate. Part of being a good boss is being a leader – some­one who will part­ner with you to work through dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. If your boss wants to keep you on the team, he should be will­ing to review the pros and cons of each option with you.

Option #1 –

go rogue all the way and start using the new title. Your boss must be will­ing to gird up for bat­tle from the com­pen­sa­tion folks as well as the out­cry of unfair treat­ment from other depart­ment mem­bers. You have to be pre­pared for the ruckus from your peers and under­stand that the job title you use doesn’t agree with offi­cial com­pany records (a really bad scene for future ref­er­ence checks).

Option #2 –

call a spade a spade and rec­og­nize that what hap­pened was a merit increase, not a pro­mo­tion and keep using your for­mer job title. Find lots of com­fort in the fact that your sig­nif­i­cant pay increase was approved – obvi­ously every­one in the line of pay approvals agreed that your per­for­mance war­ranted an increase.

Option #3 –

work with HR to deter­mine what needs to be done to cre­ate a new posi­tion so all three ele­ments of a bona fide pro­mo­tion could apply to your sit­u­a­tion. Per­haps there is addi­tional new work your boss could assign to you. Noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained.

So, an event that should have been pos­i­tive and reward­ing turned out to be con­fus­ing and dis­ap­point­ing. Not the out­come, I’m sure, that your boss wanted to have hap­pen. So, all the more rea­son to part­ner with him or her and devise a solu­tion that works to everyone’s best interests.

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