I was hired by a wealth management company beginning of 2021. I was wary of the role because the entire concept is pretty antithetical with my view points of the world but between the offers I had – this one answered my interview question about employee empowerment in a very positive way. The other was a nonprofit that I really agreed with but their answer to my “what does employee empowerment look like in your organization” was a rambling answer that eventually ended up at talking about their stock holders. At this wealth management company, I would be replacing a woman who was retiring at the end of the year and she was staying on for an entire year to train a replacement. That felt promising after working jobs where they just throw you into it.
Very early on we identified that this role had absorbed 3 people's work and she'd been doing this for decades so she'd developed a lot of shortcuts to JUST manage to take care of it all and she lobbied them to hire somebody to handle the administrative and facility stuff so I could focus on the meat of my role. So they hired somebody to be office manager for that part around the beginning of October and I prioritized operations – we'll call her “Kay”. We had software issues and client issues and bank issues the last 11 months and this turned my job that I was already working 9 hour days for into 10,11, and sometimes 12 hour days. I was paid fine but nowhere near what I should be able to get paid in the area. Plus, with it being a salaried position that I was working 25% to 50% more hours for – my “hourly” wage would have been significantly lower. I was extremely stressed out; I would not have been able to head several of the transitions I did without Kay working later and taking anything off my plate she could. It's been really tough though and without going into all the detail that non of you really want to know – it's gotten to the point where I dread going in each week. I've become painfully aware of the fact that everybody is overworked and all of their work just cascades down the line to somebody lower on the hierarchy and once Kay was hired – she was the bottom. Where I could,
I helped her with things and she helped me.
I took Friday off – it was going to be slower day before everything ramps back up. I get a text from Kay that they released her because they decided her role was no longer necessary. I checked my work email and there's an announcement that she's been let go and that her duties will be redistributed as necessary. That made it clear that they weren't looking for a replacement and because the person I replaced WAS doing all of my job plus what Kay was hired to do I felt immediately confident most (if not all) was going to come to me. I was mad on behalf of Kay to be let go so suddenly (and ~a week before Christmas). I was dreading this sudden increase in work when my day is already overwhelmingly packed. I was bothered that nobody even discussed this with me knowing that the role was a huge support to my role. I was thinking about how I viewed my job as extremely secure because nobody else knows exactly how to do my job…but before they hired me they had considered shoving high level things onto somebody's plate and all of the process items to an overseas team. They spoke very genuinely about employee empowerment in my interview and being a family that works together (even though I've always taken that with a grain of salt). I think, whatever tenuous relationship I had with my workplace has been damaged.
At the retirement party for the woman I replaced, the owner of the company was bragging about how 5 years ago they had triple the people and nearly the same productivity. I should have recognized that for what it was – the work hasn't changed. Processes weren't improved 3x. Everybody just does the work of 3 people. I'm putting in my two week notice tomorrow.