✨ benefits & boundaries

✍🏽  I was added to the leadership meetings and slowly seeing myself integrated into their weekly tasks and responsibilities. Operations Director invited me without formally discussing my journey on this path to a promotion, is it a promotion or a quiet move to give me more without compensation?

Context: Top producing Real Estate Team. Small admin team of 4 including me overseeing a team of about 16 realtors.

📣 Lisa Van Lenner, VP, Operations, People & Culture @ Mythical Entertainment:

Well, congratulations…? Maybe?

It’s usually an honor to be added to those types of meetings and privy to those conversations – it shows the team trusts you – if not your input yet, but certainly your discretion.

Sometimes inclusion into these meetings does call for a formal promotion, raise, or at least being explicitly told what it means for your path. Other times, it’s an opportunity – a way for the leadership team to adjust to you and your presence and see what it could mean in the future.

The way we determine what new tasks mean for a job at my org is to see if they’re something that would add to a JD. If the responsibility truly falls on an employee’s lap and they are required to complete it to do their job, it should be added to their JD and therefore inspire a conversation around promotion, raise or growth path. If the task is more of an opportunity, i.e. a way to get the employee exposure to a new skill or workflow, but not necessarily a responsibility – meaning they could say, “I’m not comfortable/interested/available to do this work,” then it’s not JD-worthy and not eligible for a promotion or raise based on the add.

Either way, it’s certainly weird to be added to these workflows and meetings without a conversation, but if that’s what’s happening, it may be your responsibility to start the chat and see what’s going on. The benefit of you being the one to bring it up is that you can come to the conversation with your goals and objectives laid out and talk about what you want and can provide in return.

📣 Liz Clarke, Head of People @ Environmental Health & Engineering Inc.:

It sounds like you’re being brought into some bigger conversations, which is great! But I completely get how the lack of clarity around your role in these meetings can just lead to more work. If you haven’t already, I would recommend having a discussion with the Operations Director to clarify the value you’re expected to add to these meetings. I would frame the conversation as a desire to “make sure you’re contributing and prioritizing effectively.”

If you have already attempted to have this conversation and the Director’s insights have been unhelpful, then that could be a sign that they may not know exactly how your role will differ in these meetings. You may need to train yourself to approach these meetings more strategically. For instance, if someone asks you to complete a task, use that as an opportunity to have a conversation (outside of the meeting) to understand the need and the root issue behind it. You may find that you discover a way to fix the issue without adding more physical work to your plate.

You’ll often find as you interact with senior leaders that, because they don’t have your same area of expertise, you have to take on more of a consulting role. This will mean creating solutions that address the immediate need, but doing it in a way that’s sustainable for you.

📣 Amber Francis, Executive Assistant to the CEO @ Shortcut:

If we were talking through this live, I would have more questions to provide context and better formulate a response. Given the information, I am going to assume you were hired as an HR generalist or “wearer of many hats” admin.

The biggest mistake orgs consistently make (especially the smaller ones) is quietly promoting employees without actually promoting them. They assume you will jump at the chance to be included in the Leadership meetings and “in the know” and that it is a privilege or honor. Doing more work outside the scope of the original expectations of your job description should be discussed with you prior to it happening, but here we are. 

So, given you have already been in the meetings and doing what was asked of you (which is no fault of yours, they should have done better) I would have a conversation with the Operations Director and talk about the following: Let them know you are grateful for the opportunity to take on more responsibility outside of original expectations, but you want to have a conversation about what that means. 

What the expectations are or outcomes expected from you attending the meetings, since it was never discussed. Since you are the only admin sitting in on those meetings, is this a path to promotion? As a result of attending you are finding that Leadership feels they can delegate tasks to you on projects that need attention. Are you allowed to delegate those among the administrative team, if you need to? Or even push back if you think that the tasks are outside the scope of the admin role? Maybe a request for resources for you to review and divvy out or handle as needed. If they are just asking you to contribute to projects that involve or require your expertise or insight, that’s different. Again, I am not sure of your title or position in relation to your admin peers so it’s tricky to answer if it’s reasonable for you to be able to push back or if you were hired to be an admin of all trades. Regardless, it’s a good opportunity to talk to the team about paths of promotion, and outlining steps to giving employees additional responsibilities and how to discuss and communicate that. 

Oh, and if you did not ask for this additional responsibility and it becomes more complex than what you were hired for and you are overseeing other employees – you are well within your right to ask for a change in title/salary OR decline if you don’t want it. It is not “being difficult” or “a bad employee” if you demand to be compensated for what you are doing and given the respect of asking if you want a bigger role before just assuming you want a promotion.

✍🏽  What is an impactful way to encourage our CEO to offer health benefits? We’ve had numerous candidates decline offers and employees leave because the lack of benefits/MAT leave.

Context: Small company (less than 20 employees) privately owned, all women employees. Founder is also CEO and makes all business decisions, heavily prioritizes marketing department and shows little interest/commitment in implementing proper HR practices and policies.

📣 Stephanie Slysz, Human Resources Manager @ RepresentUs:

With data, data, and more data!

Put together a presentation with the following information: look up the benefits of what your competitors are offering and compare those to yours. Look up the benefits offerings of companies your CEO respects and maybe sees your company aspiring to be! Show the number, percentage, and quotes of employees who turned down the role or left due to lack of benefits (if you’re not capturing why employees are leaving, start exit interviews). Show the cost of employee time participating in interviews being lost to these candidates. Also, consider surveying your staff on your benefits offerings and include that information. All of this data should make a convincing argument. At the end, make a realistic recommendation. Consider a phased approach that doesn’t hit the bottom line too hard but keeps you a competitive employer.

Regardless, a reckoning will come if your CEO doesn’t prioritize internal operations and systems. And sadly, as HR, you’ll be responsible for it. I come from a founder-led organization where we hit some growing pains turning from ‘start-up’ phase to a mature and respected employer. The CEO had a strong focus on our external programs, and by neglecting to invest in the internal systems and processes, employee culture and morale hit an all-time-low that took a couple years to dig out from. This isn’t a new phenomena and I’d recommend you and your CEO reach out to peers going through similar issues. It helps to have a community.