That’s unfortunate. As a small business owner, I can understand the business side of things — it can be hard to maintain profitability when someone gets promoted if they aren’t yet able to do all the skills of the job but get paid for it. I wonder if that was part of the strategy — not all the responsibility was added at once to transition?
We handle this a different way - when someone is promoted, they are given a chart of new responsibilities, expectation timeline and a small raise. Once they completely train into the role, which can be anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months, we give a larger raise. Again this is because we cannot actually afford to pay for work not being done. It seems people like the acknowledgement, clear expectations and reward when they’ve made the cut.
What's great about this is you're hedging your bets (prudent) while acknowledging the worker's needs as well. The problem without some kind of middle ground like this is that it reeeeeally feels like getting screwed when you're working above your pay grade for an extended period of time without explicit acknowledgement. I've had a lot of unhappy friends in roles like that where they were doing team lead / manager stuff and getting jerked around by HR and their boss for months or years. Now they're hypersensitive to anything that smells remotely like that experience. I like how you're making a public commitment but making sure to manage your risk. It's a great compromise.
I hope your friends have had better outcomes since. A good thing to protect yourself as a worker is to get a timeline or plan of action or growth as soon as new responsibilities creep in — if the company had the intention to promote, they will appreciate a clear path, of not, they will push back.
We handle this a different way - when someone is promoted, they are given a chart of new responsibilities, expectation timeline and a small raise. Once they completely train into the role, which can be anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months, we give a larger raise. Again this is because we cannot actually afford to pay for work not being done. It seems people like the acknowledgement, clear expectations and reward when they’ve made the cut.