What is your Title?

By Vinod Bidwaik

“I have completed three years in the organization, what is the further career growth for me?”  You must have encountered with such questions, if you are a manager. When they join the company, they take six months to adjust with the team, understand the business; it takes further one year to contribute in the organization. Their question is right, but they also need to ask the question, what they contributed to the organization during these three years. There are number of employees in the organization and off course, it goes very difficult to the organization to plan everybody’s career. In fact, most of the organizations are struggling to address the issue.

There are certain employees and off course Indian psychology supports another pseudo-satisfaction of getting promoted. It is the title change. Manager is promoted to Sr. Manager, without change in role.  The visiting card, holding the higher designation gives the social status to employees. Nobody in the society bothers actually what role he handles.

One youth approached me from one of the service organizations. He gave me his visiting card. His title was Regional Manager. I thought he may be responsible for some regional territory. I was quite happy to know that today’s’ youth are progressing fast. I asked him his territory. He told that he was responsible for specific area of the city and they used to call area as region. In his organization, there were almost 50 regional managers in one city!

Is promoting merely by designation improves the engagement? I don’t know the answer, but definitely people are fascinated by the fancy designations. AVP is one of the designations in baking, service and BPO industries. I had one friend working in one of the well known BPOs in Pune. He was AVP there, but working in shift. I was envious his designation. After working there for 1 year, he joined in manufacturing company as Manager-HR!

Candidates negotiate for designations. They want higher title. Manager wants to be Sr. Manager and Sr. Manager wants to be AGM. They totally ignore the role and job description. There can be DGM without freedom in one organization and Manager with lot of empowerment in another organization. MNCs have flat organizational structure and job responsibilities play important role in career development in such organizations. Roles are based on job evaluation methods like Hay, Mercer or Hewitt or simply internal designed methodology.

When you see the job, it is better to check the role and level in the organization. The purpose of the job, span of control, impact of the job, contribution expected by that job and salary offered are the important factors than mere designation.

Career development and career planning is not only the responsibility of organizations, but also employees’ willingness to learn more, their accountability and commitment towards job. If you follow this, mere title change will not satisfy you.