Can work just change your line manager?

[Phoningliz]

My direct line manager is retiring. I thought that her replacement (internal appointment) would be my line manager. Apparently this is not yet the case, although we've not been informed yet.

Got me thinking, that as we're quite a "flat" organisation it's likely that any other line manager would be someone currently at the same level as me. This doesn't sit comfortably with me, but I guess I don't get much say.

What's your experience? Can a peer be made your line manager?

In my workplace they reorganised the supervision and management structure and a peer became my line manager/supervisor, but he did have to apply for the newly added role first.

Well, if that couldn't happen no one would ever have chance of promotion would they?

Well, if that couldn't happen no one would ever have chance of promotion would they?

Would a promotion mean everyone having the option to apply? I'm genuinely not sure, as some people get promotions here that weren't advertised. I guess that this is my question, can someone I work with be given a promotion and become my line manager? I.e. no process around it other than they just become it.

Well it will depend on your company and their policies.

Ideally a promotion would be advertised with everyone having the opportunity to apply, but it's not a legal requirement to do so, although it's obviously good practice.

Whether the person who is promoted without an open process currently works with you or not isn't relevant.

Short answer, yes they can.

Long answer, normally peers wouldn't line manage peers, but it's not clear from your post whether the person that manages you would effectively be becoming your senior by being made your manager, i.e. promoted? Either way there's nothing actually illegal about asking the receptionist to line manage the finance director, or perhaps slightly less extreme, asking one receptionist to line manage the other, it might not be practical for the business to do so and within some roles there might be an expectation they'll be managed at a certain level of seniority but really it's down to each business to run itself how it sees fit.

As to whether the 'promotion opportunity' should be advertised for everyone to apply, this is a common misconception. A lot of businesses have policies about advertising roles openly particularly for permanent opportunities, but there's no legal requirement to do so. They can perfectly legally just pick the person who is best suited to the role providing that's not on discriminatory grounds. So e.g. it's fine to say Tim should be the new manager because he's got more experience that Fiona, but not fine to say Tim should be the new manager because Fiona is pregnant/a woman/black/disabled/gay. Fiona might have a hard time proving the situation is the latter not the former but that's by the by...

Thank you so much for your insight.

it's not clear from your post whether the person that manages you would effectively be becoming your senior by being made your manager, i.e. promoted?

It's not clear to me either. Personally, I would consider a line manager my senior but I suspect that they'll feel they have to "sell it" to me that it's not.

And everyone's contributions above have helped me identify that there is a lack of clarity about the situation, and that's helpful to me because I know what my process is around "lack of clarity", and hence my unease about this.

Well I've had 4 line managers in 3 years, so yes.

Heh, my title is a bit silly. I didn't mean "can my line manager change?" but "can work just make anyone my line manager?".

Here, departments and teams get realigned fairly often, on what seems like a whim of HR, though I assume there is actually more thought behind it. We've just had one guy promoted to lead his former team mates - 3 of them went for it. Other times, roles are just assigned and suddenly you're now reporting to someone in Germany or the USA.

It can work well - I recently got a new line manager, and I think it's an improvement - but it doesn't always work out that way.

Yes they can. When my manager retired they didn’t take applications, I was offered the job and my colleague was promoted to my old job. We work for a small business though and this is typically how they work ime.

At my last place we had some "peer management " - so my line manager had the same job as me and 4 others but got paid an extra 10 % to line manage.

I was offered a line management responsibility, but for a number of reasons said “no thank you”. So that’s what gave me a heads up that it might be on the cards for me.