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My friend told me this term. It means you were hired for a particular role but the responsibilities of other roles gradually get merged with yours, often without any increase in pay. Have you ever experienced this?
In the old days when I was young this particular scenario was always referred to on the job description as: *Other duties as assigned or necessary*.
Yes, well, it might be fine if you could handle it, but what if they suddenly put you into sales, when, beforehand, you were doing fine where you were at, but you knew you were bad at sales due to high introversion or something? I mean, what if they suddenly assigned you a role that
1.) You did not sign up for in the original job description.
2.) Was beyond your ability to do or very difficult for you to do (i.e. something MAJOR that you knew you'd be bad at and wouldn't have taken the job in the first place if the duty had originally been listed in the job description.).
My friend told me this term. It means you were hired for a particular role but the responsibilities of other roles gradually get merged with yours, often without any increase in pay. Have you ever experienced this?
Yup, and I love it.
I have, in the course of 6 years, creeped in to 4 or 5 other positions. I work for a small startup, and we have a lot of things going on. EVERY TIME my boss asks if I "want to tackle XXX job" I say yes.
The result is that a) I am still employed, b) I have learned 4 or 5 other skills that I never would have otherwise, c) I've outlasted almost every other employee as they are let go as we streamline our process (and they refuse to anything other than their own job.)
It has, however, come with an increase in pay. Every time I take over someone else's job, I get a pay raise. And my bonus this year was awesome.
The second type is legitimate role creep where someone leaves and the manager is told there is no room in the budget to hire. So they assign the work to....ta da!!! You!
This, right here, is my current situation. Got hired for a role, direct supervisor (a Director) quit to go to another company, company shifted out 25% of my assignments that I was hired for and gave me 50% new stuff. In other words, I'm doing 75% of my old stuff plus 50% of new stuff that my former supervisor was doing. Okay. Some more people (worker bees level) quit to go elsewhere, management decided to shift people around. I ended up in a related group with a new title and more work.......while still assigned to the previous processes and assignments. So now I'm doing 2 people's worth. New director was hired and I now report to her. She was brought in to improve various processes which I agree needed fixing. Great, I inherited another expanded role that tacks on another 35-40% worth of normal hours to my workload. Not only that, but along the way I somehow became "managers" of a handful of folks at various subsidiaries and foreign offices because THEIR supervisors either quit or were fired, as well as serving as the "go to" guy to the replacement supervisors until they've caught up.
So that makes my workload equivalent to three people's worth. Except I started pushing back, and looking to move on if things doesn't change (which is a likelihood).
The company that laid me off last year - a large multinational corporation -this was their chosen mode of operation, and it was solely done to save money and add to the profit margin.
Closest thing I've experience was "scope creep". One reason why nobody ended up getting paid on a software contract, and lawyers probably got involved.
As for role creep, it can be a good thing, but do watch out for some of the warning signs...
1) Make sure it's feasible. If you're pulling an additional 5, 10, 20 hours per week without extra pay, that's effectively a pay cut.
This can be detrimental if folks are taking evening classes, or need to look after kids
2) Make sure they're not stringing you along with promises of a raise, or how things will get better (less work, or they'll hire new help).
I've heard of in a post how one person did a free "temp to hire". Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months. After 4 months, she finally mustered the courage to ask about this permanent position. Boss said there wasn't anything for now. All those wasted months, but at least she didn't stay any longer beyond that.
3) If they don't give you training or any guidance for the new roles, and it's just sink or swim, then hopefully it's something you can pick up on your own, and mistakes won't cost the company big.
What comes to mind is when I worked for a department store as a secretary. They cut back on gift wrap staff. They wanted me to train to do gift wrap (which I hate doing and suck at in the best of circumstances). Now, the amateurish job I do for family/friends is pretty much tolerated, but we're talking expensive wrap and ribbon and people who PAY for it. I was a nervous wreck doing this for fussy people who were paying for a professional gift wrap, and I was slow and all thumbs at it. I wasted a lot of expensive wrap and ribbon and the results were less than desirable. That didn't last long.
I also found out that office staff pulled away from their regular tasks to do gift wrap were still expected to make up their regular work (by staying late).
Most registered nurses do : So that is the issue...they forgot to put the C for creep in the R.N. IT should be R.R.C.N. (Registered Role Creep Nurse)
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