Boss has asked us to make a promotion decision

[Dollyparton3]

Hi all,

My employers are notoriously weak when it comes to people management but I suspect this is over the line this time.

Early last year we went into a restructure and we all had to decide which jobs we wanted.

I was team lead at the time and my job went “up for grabs”, I of course reapplied and so did one of my immediate colleagues.

16 months down the line we’ve never had feedback on why the role was left hanging, we’ve both chased and we’re told that the post wasnt needed so wasnt being filled. I’ve asked 121 if there were any performance concerns and my VP assures me there weren’t, but he just left the vacancy hanging.

Now he wants someone to fill that role and told myself and my colleague that we have to decide between us who takes it. We told him that this was an unreasonable request, he’s directly pegging two colleagues against each other, long term it’s a disaster.

He told us we’re being negative and should get over it.

He’s a bellend, right?

Complete bellend, yes.

This is so unprofessional, its scary

No manager in their right mind would expect 2 peers to decide between themselves who should be promoted.

Is there HR or anyone in your organisation you can go to ? He doesn't have a leg to stand on here !

so you are happy to be kept dangling for over a year??

I'd have been looking for alternative jobs pretty fast after having to "reapply" for my own job.

What utter nonsense. Bellend indeed

Why did your job go "up for grabs" to everyone else if you were still in it? Demoting you and replacing you with a colleague would have been a very risky thing for your employer to do!

If a new appointment to your role never took place, therefore the 'new' structure never took effect, surely you are still in post? If they didn't need anyone at all in the role, surely you would have been redundant?

Of course you shouldn't decide between you and a colleague who gets a promotion, how utterly ridiculous.

What do you want to achieve?

If a new appointment to your role never took place, therefore the 'new' structure never took effect, surely you are still in post?

That was what I was scratching my head wondering, flowery the OP was in the role before, nothing happened, so they are... still in role.

It's untenable for a decision about restructuring to fall to the person or people affected by the change to resolve. There should be either f2f interviews or pre-stated "paper assessment" of skills, competencies and experience to those who have thrown their hat into the ring for the role. Then after the successful candidate has been offered the role, any unsuccessful candidates should be notified of the situation in a professional way.

Anything less is an abomination, and highly detrimental to team morale. But it doesn't sound like that's even on their radar.

Thanks for all your replies, to clarify where my role has been dangling for the past year or so, I was acting Head for 6 months whilst finishing off an outstanding HR issue, (sacking someone) then they “stood me down” in my old role.

Since then they’ve put other people in the post in other countries but the line manager in Europe has ignored me every time I’ve tried to get the discussion back on the table. Now this has happened after I asked him for a meeting to talk about my career potential with the company.

There is a CEO I can go to, looking more likely every day. I’m also looking for other jobs