Employee Receives A Promotion That Ends Up Being $30K Less Salary, Changes Workplaces, Couldn’t Be Happier

Now, there are a few main things that employees value in every workplace: salary, benefits, work-life balance and the possibility to grow. These four factors are probably the most important that everybody looks for when searching for a long-term workplace. 

It’s not a secret that being appreciated and valued, especially in the workplace, is an amazing feeling. It kinda even motivates you to not let people that depend on you down. However, on the contrary, probably one of the crappiest feelings is when you give all your time, energy, basically all your life and it turns out you were never appreciated and valued that much.

More info: imgur

If you are feeling unhappy and feeling undervalued in the workplace, don’t wait and just hope that things are going to change

Image credits: Pexels (not the actual photo)

Guy shared his story so that people who read it would not repeat his mistake and have an appropriate work-life balance

Image credits: dealgood

Image credits: dealgood

Image credits: imgur.com

Image credits: dealgood

Image credits: dealgood

Image credits: dealgood

Image credits: dealgood

Image credits: dealgood

The author says that he hasn’t felt so refreshed for a long time and all it took was just leaving his previous workplace

A few days ago, a guy shared his story online about how he got a ‘promotion’ that resulted in a $30K pay cut and no changes in responsibilities. The story attracted a lot of netizens’ attention and after 5 days, it had more than 145K views and almost 3K upvotes. 

The author starts by explaining that he was promoted, without any consultations or discussions. He got a management title, but the responsibilities never really changed and he was not getting paid for any overtime anymore, which led to the cut in his salary. Over the years, medical bills just continued growing, and the guy was eventually just skirting by with his money. 

However, the worst part is that the author gave up most of his life to this work over the last decade, whereas his friends are already creating families. This whole period of time, he remembers as just feeling defeated, betrayed and undervalued. He added that he had been struggling a lot until he found a message from a recruiter offering a position with a competitor.

So to begin with, the salary is better and the work is fully remote. However, what made the author finally move on from his previous workplace was when the top person in the company announced that they have very competitive salaries and if employees don’t like it, they can just leave. And finally, happy ending for you here – the author completed the interviews that led to an even better offer than the original one, with no overtime and finally a healthy work-life balance.

Folks in the comments shared happiness for the OP and shared personal stories and suggestions. “Moral of the story in modern times: don’t get a promotion, get a different job. I’ve seen this story play out so many times it’s crazy,” one user wrote. “You deserve happiness, I’m glad this finally worked out for you. Now enjoy your free time and have some fun new experiences,” another person added.

Image credits: melinda257 (not the actual photo)

Bored Panda got in touch with Amy Lentz Liberati, who is a leading HR at a global company, and she kindly agreed to share her insights regarding a healthy workplace and how to achieve it. 

“Work-life balance is attainable when a leadership approach centers accountability and flexibility,” she started. “If someone knows what their boss expects of them, they’re free to operate from a place of freedom and security.”

Speaking about the things that companies can do to prevent valuable employees from being poached by competitors, Amy emphasizes: “We’re all motivated to stay in – or leave – a job for different reasons. Conducting anonymous engagement surveys (ideally twice per year) is invaluable to understanding a company’s culture, including what motivates people to stay, and in exit surveys, what drives people to leave.”

“These survey insights can steer where the HR function invests their time and budget. There’s work (what we do) and then there’s how we do that work, and how we feel while working… that’s culture. Investing in understanding your culture will greatly benefit retention efforts. I recommend showing staff the backend of a survey tool, so people understand just how anonymous their responses are.”

And finally, Amy shared the best way that companies can promote a healthy work-life balance. “One way to demonstrate prioritizing work-life balance is a proactive Job Description (JD) Audit Program. What’s the average tenure of an employee? Let’s say it’s 2.5 years – at the 2 year mark, HR would proactively reach out to an employee and their direct leader to understand the employee’s active responsibilities and time requirements.”

Following this, “HR re-levels the title and compensation to reflect updated responsibilities, and supports relevant requests for temp support, or additional roles to be added to the team. In a healthy work environment, HR acts as a true support function across the org, equipping people with a broad scope of resources to operate in excellence.”

“The biggest reason people don’t feel work-life balance is the urge to respond to email they receive outside of work hours. It’s human nature – if our boss emails us, we want to demonstrate our commitment to our job, so we respond… right away. Even at 10pm. Even at 7am. If leaders got in a habit of scheduling email to send during work hours (unless actually time-sensitive) we’d see lower anxiety, heightened engagement during the workday, and overall a more engaged employee base,” Amy finished.

And of course, don’t forget to check out Amy’s Instagram and TikTok as she actively posts very useful information that may help everyone! Additionally, she provides access to Google Drive where she actively adds helpful resources for people to use in their jobs!

Image credits: NikolayFrolochkin (not the actual photo)

Moreover, Bored Panda contacted Connie Clace, who is the creator of Connie’s Career Coaching, and she kindly agreed to answer a few comments.

“The first thing I would suggest when it comes to a promotion is that the employee makes sure that they understand what the new job is and what the compensation package is before taking on additional responsibilities. Don’t take the job first and then assume that you will get what you think you are worth. It doesn’t always work that way. Negotiate the terms of the promotion before you accept it,” Connie emphasized.

Speaking about ways to achieve healthier work-life balance, the career coach says to “Go to HR and make them aware of your contributions and how you are now feeling about your situation. Let them know about your personal goals outside of the company, and how important it is for you to get that balance.”

“HR professionals should also come up with different service models that will help all employees achieve a better work-life balance, including job sharing, job rotation to help develop new skills and create a more efficient environment, more flexibility in the working hours, remote working, etc. This way, each employee can find their own way of working that will maximize their responsibilities at work without sacrificing their own personal goals.”

And finally, “Managers should be doing regular workload analyses of all their employees, to ensure that there is an equitable work distribution and that everyone is working up to the specified standards,” she emphasized. “Overtime hours should be regularly monitored to ensure there is really a requirement for overtime.”

And of course, don’t forget to check out Connie’s Linkedin and website that can help for your future career!

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