Toronto Employment and Labour Blog: Sure Signs You Are About To Be Fired - Sign #8

SIGN #8 THE SIBERIA TREATMENT - 

You are “promoted” to a position with substantially less responsibility and with no one reporting directly to you.

Such a “promotion” may be in breach of your employment contract, whether it is written or verbal and may trigger your severance entitlement. Of course, your agreement must set out your duties and responsibilities with some detail and clarity for this to be the case. For example, if 20 sales representatives are reporting to you and now there are none and, in addition, if you were reporting to a vice president and now you are reporting to the sales manager who reports to that vice president, you may have suffered a demotion that amounts to a breach of your employment agreement.

Once again, your employer may be attempting to make you so uncomfortable that you will resign in frustration, thereby saving him a costly severance package.

If the employer is reorganizing a number of job positions, including your own, and the move does not impact negatively on your compensation or your status within the organization, it may be justified as a necessary corporate adjustment. In any case, the consequences to you of the change must be pointed out to your supervisor, in writing. You don’t wish to appear to have condoned your employer’s unilateral decision to limit your responsibilities or reporting relationships. You must place your concern or objection on the record. It may be that the negative change is just the first step in a series of moves, all of which must be documented by way of memo or email setting out your former level of responsibilities, reporting relationships and status in the company and the negative consequences to you of this employer initiated change.

Assurance by the employer that the change is temporary should also be documented for future reference, if that turns out not to be the case. Research the motivation for the change in order to determine whether it is part of an overall corporate strategy or an individual initiative imposed on you personally and not on others.

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