I was chatting with one of the admins in payroll and the subject of the pay freeze came up. She laughed. Sure wages were frozen but hadn’t I noticed the rash of title changes around here? Just under half of the division managers had been transformed into Assistant VPs, VPs, Assistant Chief Something Officers, or Chief Something Officers. Philip had just become Chief Technology Officer. Obviously there had been a pay increase along with that title change.
There was no longer a plain old manager in my division. Mine wasn’t the only department missing a manager. Apparently there had been a mad scramble to grab the new titles.
We all knew a pay freeze and hiring freeze had been mandated from HQ but they neglected to mandate a title change embargo also. I argued that some of those title changes were coming anyway. She looked at me pitifully and quietly told me that the payroll was now 18% higher than before the financial meltdown. The entire increase was going to those crafty ex-managers. They had vacated their old positions so hastily they did not give a thought to their successor. There was a power vacuum in the middle zone.
There is a history lesson here. This is how that famous gap widens – between those that know how and those that know why. You would think everyone could have stepped up a peg but that would not have worked. Everyone would have had a pay increase. Someone somewhere would smell a rat. On the other hand, half the managers does not amount to a visible number on paper, even though the actual cost is a 18% increase in payroll.
The situation is that there is no one ready to step into the vacant manager roles. No one was being “groomed for management.” The policy has been to keep everyone not “in the club” at arms length from any decision-making. The club has done very well for itself. I wondered if this title hopping had occurred throughout the company so that those watching the budget were also in the club and had helped themselves to a new title.
Had the executives that mandated the hiring and wage freezes purposely built in the title-change loop-hole for themselves?
The Big Wage Freeze
I was chatting with one of the admins in payroll and the subject of the pay freeze came up. She laughed. Sure wages were frozen but hadn’t I noticed the rash of title changes around here? Just under half of the division managers had been transformed into Assistant VPs, VPs, Assistant Chief Something Officers, or Chief Something Officers. Philip had just become Chief Technology Officer. Obviously there had been a pay increase along with that title change.
There was no longer a plain old manager in my division. Mine wasn’t the only department missing a manager. Apparently there had been a mad scramble to grab the new titles.
We all knew a pay freeze and hiring freeze had been mandated from HQ but they neglected to mandate a title change embargo also. I argued that some of those title changes were coming anyway. She looked at me pitifully and quietly told me that the payroll was now 18% higher than before the financial meltdown. The entire increase was going to those crafty ex-managers. They had vacated their old positions so hastily they did not give a thought to their successor. There was a power vacuum in the middle zone.
There is a history lesson here. This is how that famous gap widens – between those that know how and those that know why. You would think everyone could have stepped up a peg but that would not have worked. Everyone would have had a pay increase. Someone somewhere would smell a rat. On the other hand, half the managers does not amount to a visible number on paper, even though the actual cost is a 18% increase in payroll.
The situation is that there is no one ready to step into the vacant manager roles. No one was being “groomed for management.” The policy has been to keep everyone not “in the club” at arms length from any decision-making. The club has done very well for itself. I wondered if this title hopping had occurred throughout the company so that those watching the budget were also in the club and had helped themselves to a new title.
Had the executives that mandated the hiring and wage freezes purposely built in the title-change loop-hole for themselves?