Be Prepared for the Upcoming ‘Quiet’ Promotion Season

January is the month with the biggest number of involuntary job loss each year. I am SURE you are prepared, having read the article below. If you haven't prepped for it yet, it's not too late!

February is the month when the people who were their former coworkers rapidly move through ‘survivor’s guilt’ and learn of the changes to their daily responsibilities.

• Some people find that they have ‘expanded roles’.
• Some people learn that they are ‘monitoring a project’.
• Some people find that their knowledge, skills, and abilities are the perfect thing to ‘fill in for now’, while adjustments are made and priorities recalculated.

All of these people, and more, will have had a Quiet Promotion.

What is a Quiet Promotion?

The Quiet Promotion is the newest in the list of ‘Quiet’ business practices that have been rebranded with this innocuous modifier.

Quiet Quitting: employees setting clear boundaries on their jobs and doing only what is in their job description and/or for which they are compensated. And not a teeny bit more.

Quiet Firing: Subtly encouraging or even outright urging an employee to leave the company by withholding feedback, information, encouragement, counseling, or growth opportunities.

Quiet Hiring: Closely related to a Quiet Promotion, this description includes bringing in temporary contractors, temporary workers, or giving temporary assignments to existing staff.

Quiet Promotion. The brief explanation: Increasing existing employee’s workloads and responsibilities without a pay increase, job title change. or recognition of their new duties.

But Wait! There’s More!

Quiet Promotion differs from Quiet Hiring in several ways:

• The Quietly Promoted employee is responsible for more work that coworkers with similar job titles and/or rate of pay.
• The Quietly Promoted has duties added, but none removed.
• The Quietly Promoted often take on the workload of a higher-level employee while getting no salary increase.

The way this is handled varies however it often includes the emotional element of doing it for the sake of the team, and it often carries the implied threat that, if things aren’t done, more layoffs could happen. And we don’t want that, do we?

How Common Is This?

This is all too common although it tends to get lost in the discussion of layoffs and overhead reduction. A survey from JobSage revealed that 78% of workers have experienced at least a temporary Quiet Promotion.

And, since January is the month of the year with the most involuntary job losses, all of that work that used to be done by those departing employees needs to be done by someone.

It can be a vicious cycle: a Quiet Promotion can lead to Quiet Quitting and burnout, leads to Quiet Firing by guilty and resentful managers and supervisors, leads to more layoffs, and then more Quiet Promotions to those still standing.

What to Do

Do you suspect that Quiet Promotions are happening in your workplace? You may want to head it off and take the initiative if you suspect you may be given one!

If there have been layoffs without discussions of who will cover the work the recently departed used to do (remember when Twitter/X did that?!); start the conversation. That could sound like:

• “We usually do such-and-such every month, who is the person that will make sure it is done now that so-and-so is gone?”
• “Is this-and-that still important now that the person that did it is gone?”
• “I noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of information and requests that used to go to so-and-so; who should get that now?”
• “I’ve been asked to complete this-and-such today; could you confirm my project priorities since I’ll need to stop doing something if I work on this?”

These may not be comfortable conversations. They might not hold a Quiet Promotion at bay, either. But you have nothing to lose here; if you don’t initiate the conversation then you will end up in a reactive position when the conversation eventually happens.

And, regardless of the answers, you now have opened the door to discussion regarding the new responsibilities. They need you.

They need you.

THEY NEED YOU.

Do you want a new title? Need training to take on the work? Want to carry over vacation time? Request work from home? Want a raise ‘until they bring someone on’?

THIS is the time to speak up. And because you started the conversation you are showing strategic and tactical awareness of the needs of the business. You are a Team Player. You are Doing Your All.

I’m so proud of you.

~~~

Besides my own time served on the retail front lines, I have over 20 years of corporate retail management in Operations, Communications, and Sales Management. You can find more articles on my profile here, along with lots of other stuff!

I always appreciate your comments. Have you seen this happen where you work? Have YOU ever been Quietly Promoted? Gotten an 'expanded roll'? Let me know!

(Part of this was previously published through my Medium account. Link to that is on my Vocal profile page, too!)