Wasn’t promoted with the rest of my cohort

[Karmaka]

I started my role just over a year ago as part of a cohort of 5. I've always been told I'm doing well by my manager. In my industry, people in my role tend to get promoted roughly once a year.

I found out today that all 4 of the people I started working with have been promoted, apart from me. My heart sunk when I saw the announcement and I feel a bit taken aback and embarrassed. I have had some adjustments made to my role over the last few months, so I feel like that's why I didn't get promoted but it still stings. I’ve only heard positive things from my manager and senior management. My head of department had a meeting with me where he has said he doesn't want me to feel that my adjustments are going to affect my career progression, and he said that the senior leadership team are keen to support me in my role and adapting my role and career path to suit me. All my feedback from my manager on my work is positive and I’ve been told I’m excellent at my job

I’m grateful for their understanding and flexibility, but at the same time I feel like i just wish they’d be honest about it impacting my ability to be promoted. I feel so embarrassed as it’s so noticeable that I’m the only one who hasn’t been promoted

What is the gender and age mix or your cohort? Do you have dc and they don't? Are there other factors that come into it. What do your managers say about why you have been held back?

What sort of adjustments were made to your role?

What kind of adjustments did they make?

It’s hard to say without knowing what the adjustments where and whether the promoted role would affect it

When you say adjustments, do you mean relating to a disability? Because they’re on very dodgy ground if they’ve denied you promotion on that basis.

Of course they're not going to admit not promoting you due to adjustments because then you have a claim against them. What reasons did they give for not promoting you along with the rest?

What adjustments were made to your role and how would they impact the more senior role?

E.g. if you have a reasonable adjustment not to do presentations but the majority of the promoted role is presentations then that would be an issue, but it should still have been discussed with you.

Either way, posters can’t really help with limited details. The best thing to do would be to speak to your manager to ask why you have not been promoted

I think there’s a lot of detail that would need to be known.

Like what are the adjustments. Did you have a lot of time off? What’s the mix of the cohort? Is the promotion usually automatic? Or is there a set criteria or level you need to reach.

For example if your adjustment is as made after you had to take 4 months off and you only work 10 hours a week, your manager may feel you are doing really but not where you need to be due to you being in far less and you haven’t met the set criteria, due to this.

We’re all a similar age without children. The adjustments involve me a small change to how I work in my team, I present less and tend to share work offline by email rather than present it in meetings as I have really bad anxiety when it comes to presenting. I know you might judge me for this but I was finding it unbearable and was going to quit. This was a suggestion made by my manager on how they could adapt my role. I had a meeting with my head of department about it and they said they don’t want their job descriptions to feel rigid and want to have a diverse team

My manager never brought up promotions and I never thought much about it, I didn’t realise everyone else had gotten promoted until the announcement. Ever since the announcement one of my colleagues has been treating me differently and has been ignoring my emails

Have you posted before OP? This sounds very familiar

In the more senior role, the biggest change is having more independence with tasks and working at a higher level/more complicated tasks. Presenting is a very small part of the job (at other companies it sometimes isn’t part of the job at all for similar roles, the responsibility of presenting would fall on project managers)

nope

If you were thinking of quitting and they've rearranged the job to remove the bits you have issues with it sounds like they want to keep you but the changes mean you haven't really achieved what they hoped. It may seem like the presentation aspect is small but they may see it as a stumbling block for you.

This is the thread I was thinking of and has some advice that might be helpful OP: Similar Thread

You need to ask your manager exactly what it is you need to do to progress.

Is your colleague actually ignoring you or is it possible they are busy

Yes they may see it as if you were struggling to the point of nearly quitting in your current role then you are possibly not ready for progression. This should have been discussed with you though

Arrange a meeting with your manager to discuss your prospects. And while you're in there, discuss with him that "since the announcement one of my colleagues has been treating me differently and has been ignoring my emails". Your manager needs to know this ASAP and it has to be nipped in the bud.

Definitely same person. Far too similar not to be.

Anyway, have you spoken to your manager or HR to ask why you weren't promoted? What reasons did they give?

I would ask them what you need to do to get promoted and can you have specific goals to achieve that? Don’t focus on why others have, focus on yourself.

OP it sounds like you don't have the confidence nor experience that the others have in your current role to be deserving of the same promotion.
They've stepped in to cover things you struggle with.

Are you getting help for your anxiety?

This, are your colleagues having to take on aspects of your projects or are there projects you won't be allocated because of not taking on presentations?

It's not judging at all, but if part of the job is presenting in meetings (and I assume there'a a persuasiveness element involved in doing this that is part of the role) and you are not able to do that, then it seems understandable why you've not been promoted? I have every sympathy as I've been there as a new graduate to the point of panic attacks (confidence has improved hugely now, and I think the same will happen to you, you just end up not really caring as much.) But I wouldn't have expected to get promoted if I wasn't doing an integral part of my role and others were.

Here’s another similar thread that may be helpful down the line, the OP of this thread also had adjustments made due to anxiety after they handed in their notice, however in this one the manager said it would impact progression: Thread