HR Advice

[Merlin]

Here is where I see the problem "the guy that got fired was a VP", but the replacement - she is only a Director.  Is this 'policy' they're talking about in the handbook (documented for all employees to know) or is this something that is just known or SOP?  Even if it is a written policy most large corporations have exception policies in place - such as when the job requires a certain level of 'respect' (in title) due to acceptance internationally.  It seems that being a woman puts you at a disadvantage internationally (unfortunately, this is still common in many cultures) by not being a VP; then by the same token it puts your company at a disadvantage by not recognizing you as such.  Whatever happens get it in writing.

I was wondering the same thing. Where is this policy documented? Can someone point it out to you in the company policy documentation? Are you sure there isn't a gender thing going on here?

In my experience titles in a company are fluid. If the big boss says make this person a VP, then HR cannot say no. If you're supposed to be a VP, then your boss is probably an SVP or C-level. Their boss is probably the CEO/President. If an SVP doesn't have the power to force your title promotion (which seems unlikely to me) then surely their boss can if approached about it. If this could be a potential issue for the company, then it seems like it would be in their best interests to make it happen.

One thing that I have done in the past when I wanted to give someone a title promotion but when there was red tape on a job grade increase (for companies that use them) is to just change the title without adjusting the job grade. This means there is no compensation or benefits increase, but it allows the employee to have a legit title change. I've found that most of the time when there is pushback on a promotion, its due to compensation or benefits. For example, I had an employee with an internal job grade/title of "Director I" who had the title of "Senior Director" which would normally be a job grade 2 levels higher. That same company also had promotion limits where someone couldn't increase more than 1 job grade per 6 months so it took a year or so before they could be promoted into the job grade associated with the title.

It sounds like this may be what your boss is attempting if they are talking an external title change. So your internal title (or job grade, held with HR) would define your compensation and benefits but your external title (what people refer to your title within the company and by your customers) is what everyone sees. As long as HR knows about the internal/external title, then you should be fine with using it anywhere or putting it on your CV. In a reference, the company should be able to validate external titles.

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Wow - that quickly went off the rails.  I'm going to guess that this is all a bunch of hooey, and that the policy is written (large company usually means lots of crap in writing), and I'm going to guess that they knew she was a woman when they hired her, so there's no discrimination going on (or they would have hired a man).  Instead, they brought her in while the VP was there, and so had to justify to him what was going on, and had to bring her in at a certain level - and now are being hamstrung by a policy that they're going to have to work around.  Geez, how about if we just assume bureaucratic policies and ineptitude first, and discrimination as a last resort!

I think it is a legitimate question. Gender bias is a very real thing in a lot of corporations, particularly international ones. The thing is that people who are committing it don't even always realize that they are doing so. I've been an executive at the corporate level for nearly 20 years and I know this has been the case in most of the companies I've worked for.

That said, there may very well be job grades and/or policies that define a minimum time between promotions which could support the reasons she cannot be moved to VP directly. Though in that case, it also suggests that if they hired her with the plan to promote her into her bosses role, they purposefully hired her more than 1 job grade below that of her former boss, which is why she cannot be directly promoted to VP. That may be just where the negotiations landed, or it was done to disguise the plan from her former boss, or it could be intentional or unintentional gender bias. It's hard to tell.