Want to Keep Your Workers Happy? Don’t “Fake Promote” Them With New Job Titles

Shakespeare really nailed the “what’s in a name?” question — roses do smell as sweet no matter what you call ‘em. But when it comes to writing business text and job titles, rather than poetry and names, things get a little more complex as workers’ egos and motivational benefits like pay rises join in. Now a new report shines an interesting light on a strange job title-related phenomenon that’s afflicting the average worker: “title inflation.” Even Shakespeare would have a hard time shaping this story into a beautiful verse.

As you may have expected, the workers don’t emerge on the positive side of this trick. In fact, 92 percent of the 1,000 U.S. workers questioned by online resume building service MyPerfectResume said they’d seen companies use overblown job titles to make it seem like their career was progressing. And this played out even as their managers weren’t accompanying the “fake” promotion with meaningful benefits like higher pay or extra recognition alongside an inflated job name.

As someone who’s held an innumerable number of job titles over the years, from junior business analyst to technician I’ve seen some of this go on. And if you think about it, you certainly have too: I bet you know a junior section manager of XYZ or two who’s been “promoted,” and lost the “junior,” but that’s as far as things went in terms of pay or other compensation.

MyPerfectResmue’s data also show that two in three workers think this habit of job title inflation is actually happening more than in the past. And, as industry news site HRDive notes, there’s a sad, mind games-related reaction happening to this sort of managerial trick: workers admitted that they were afraid to negotiate with management when this occurs, and 9 percent have been given a new more senior title without a raise, and shockingly 15 percent had even accepted a more “senior” job title that came with a functional salary cut. Worse, perhaps, some 37 percent of the survey respondents said they had felt pressured to accept a new job title without negotiating more pay.

We can assume that the gloomy job market, endless headlines reporting layoffs and the ever-growing threat that AI may take people’s jobs is playing a role here. After all, reports say that people are so afraid of being fired that they’re feeling guilty about taking vacations, and they’re “task masking” too — pretending to work hard even when their workload is light so that managers see them and think they’re busy, and not worth replacing with an AI. 

Combine a nervous job-hugging workforce with a management system that’s under constant pressure to deliver more productivity, without necessarily being given budget or authority to “reward” workers properly, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for managers pulling off dirty tricks like offering someone a new, grander-seeming job title that comes with extra duties, but no managerial authority or, indeed, extra pay. This is backed up by MyPerfectResume data which showed 20 percent of workers think employers inflate job titles to justify assigning more responsibilities, 19 percent think it’s merely about flattery, and 16 percent think it’s a ploy to retain workers long term.

Now, you can argue that job titles don’t matter, and you may feel that in your small enterprise everyone’s got a simple, meaningful one that doesn’t overstate or overpromise their role.

But the thing is job titles do matter in subtle ways. For example, 41 percent of survey respondents in this new study said a title had made them seem either over or under qualified when they were applying for a new role, and 11 percent said that an unusual job title had made it harder to explain and justify their work experience. 

And, just like being given the corner office, a new, more senior-seeming job title without an accompanying raise or other benefit really represents no advancement at all for a worker. Keep pulling this trick off and you could build up resentment in your workforce, which could then drive down engagement and, with that, your profits.

Simply: it might be time to audit your promotions and rewards program, and to check that everyone feels they’ve got the right job title and that their pay reflects that title properly.