Many companies are giving fancy and high-sounding designations to their employees to keep them happy. While it makes the holders of the posts happy for the time being, experts fear that this practice will dilute the importance of the once coveted designations and also create an imbalance in the job market. Some companies promote their assistant deputy associate to deputy associate but the job profile hardly changes. He or she will still be doing the same work.
Similarly, a vice president may just be performing the task of a manager while a person with a high-sounding designation of manager (training) may just have a handful of employees under him. Then there are some companies who don’t like to refer to their workers as employees but term them partners. Employees have designations like lead partner, senior partner etc.
Traditionally, a partner is someone who gets a part of the company’s profit, but this is not the case here. It is just a designation. A sales executive is often referred to as an area manager to impress clients. An operations manager in some companies has just one duty—to ensure that cars arrive on time.
And that is not all. Some companies like to call their peons as office assistants and drivers as fleet assistants. "It is true that often the designation does not match the tasks," says Mr Rakesh Kumar Yacham, business relationship manager with Satyam. "I would like an employee to have the same job profile his tag professes. But often it’s not the case."
Some feel this trend is diluting the significance of designations. "Today there is a vast imbalance in talent and the companies often have to recruit candidates at a quick pace to fill up their positions," says Mr Naveen Chander, corporate spokesperson of job portal whereismyboss.com. "But this has a flip side. Today anyone who can handle a certain volume of task is made the vice president, a designation that was earned by the best and experienced employees earlier."
Another problem arises when you move to a different company and are forced to be content with a lower post. Mr Srinivas of EMRI, a corporate company that provides emergency medical service to people, points out that his company had got an application from a woman candidate who works as country head in a small organisation. "But here, a country head is someone who has about 1,00,000 people under her . So we can’t offer her the same position," he adds.
But sometimes having a fancy designation can work in your favour too as a higher designation boosts an employee’s morale. Mr A.W George, Business Head of Hero Mindmine Institute Ltd, says that titles help attract and retain people in an organisation. "If you are working in a company for sometime, you are bound to reflect on your growth in the organisation," says Mr Balaji C, a QA engineer. "So companies offer new designations."