I’m a learning and development consultant at a large debt collection company.
Due to a recent merger, I’ve now got a new team and new employer. I was promised more diversity in my role, I’d be doing so much more than back to back inductions.
Straight into the merger, we land a huge client. They ask me to work on the project for six months. It’s not an ideal situation but it’s only temporary, so I say yes. It means that I have to work on site full time across three locations (one of which is very far away from me) while the rest of the HR team get to work from home. But it’s only temporary, so I say yes.
Well the other day, I was told that they want me to stay on this project indefinitely and that my reporting line will change, taking me out of the HR department and under operations. I am not happy, I tell them I’ll think about it.
The next day, I discuss it with the project manager, the guy who would be my new manager and he knows nothing about it. This sounds alarm bells for me, as it shows it was not an Operational decision but an HR one instead.
My instinct tells me that they want me to resign because they can’t afford me. We all know that L&D is always the first to be cut from a budget. They can’t terminate me because I’m fantastic at my job.
I declined the ‘offer’ and told them there are two options from here: end my employment now or put me on a six month contract so that I can design the framework to hand off to the next poor sucker who takes over. Still waiting on a response.
Am I being smoked out of my job?