Can anything be done by HR if you have been moved too many times from manager to manager? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I have had 6 managers in as many years. The organizational shifts may make sense at a higher level, however I find myself spinning my wheels over and over for the past 5 years. Each time I change managers, it seems that every bit of initiative, extra load and perceived seniority I’ve worked to attain is wiped out as I have to train a new manager on the work that I handle. With each new manager, additional workload is usually added to my responsibility. All of this throughout the years has dampened my hope that any advancement will ever be possible. It turns a job and role that I used to enjoy and was excited to be a part of into a recurring nightmare, knowing that anything I have done until now is considered distant past, and leaving me with no hope that anything I do moving forward will be considered in any future organizational changes.

Each time I move, the org under me stays with me. To my teams (yes there are multiple), the shifts are mostly transparent, the biggest change for them is that I use a different name when referring to our leadership. This most recent change has me assuming responsibility over an additional team, bringing my headcount from 12 to 19.

I’m not demanding that I be advanced without merit, but I am very concerned that I am being shifted from manager to manager, and sometimes org to org, without consideration of the single employee it impacts the most, me.

Do I have any foot to stand on with an HR complaint? Should I be hopeful that anything will be done? I don’t even know what I would expect to be done in this situation.

manpreet 2 years ago

Do I have any foot to stand on with an HR complaint? Should I be hopeful that anything will be done? I don’t even know what I would expect to be done in this situation.

Certainly HR knows that you have had 6 managers in 6 years. So that fact wouldn't be a surprise to them.

Thus, complaining to HR is unlikely to change anything. It might be possible that HR would get a better sense of the unease these reorgs are causing you. And they might commiserate and try to make you feel better. But they clearly cannot just go to your bosses boss and say "stop reorganizing".

You need to use your 6-year knowledge of the company to conclude if this is a cultural thing or not. Some companies reorg/transfer all the time. If that's the case, you'll need to learn to live with it, or move on to another more stable company. Or, this may be an isolated case where you just happen to be in the center of some instability, in which case it might end now.

I recently worked for a company that constantly reorged. My team was split, reformed, and split again. I was given offshore teams, they were taken away, then given back again. In one period I worked for 4 different managers in 3 years - a few local, a few remote. And when I resigned, I was told to stick around because they were reorging me yet again. That's not how I wanted to live/work, so I left.

In some cases, a large company has several divisions - some stable, others not so stable. If that's the case in your company, and if you are in the unstable division, you might look into the possibility of transferring in hopes of more stability.