How To deal with A Demotion

A demotion can be a devastating palpate in your work and can be a step backwards in more ways than one.

Typically, getting demoted involves a reduction in your compensation or job responsibilities, or both.

The end effect is that you are left in a lower position at work that is not as good as you had previously.

What should you do?

Before doing anything, you need to understand the reasons for this decision and how it affects your immediate tenure with the company.

Certainly a demotion is a fairly public event and the people that you work with will ordinarily be aware one way or an additional one that you have been demoted if it involves you curious to a different (ie. Lower) position that you previously held.

In this regard, a demotion can be both embarrassing and de-motivating since you might start questioning your hereafter with the company.

Certainly, your long-term status with the company might be in jeopardy especially if the new job you are assigned to doesn't work out either.

Depending on your specific situation a demotion might occur for any reasons such as your inability to deal with the job as required, a new boss arrival on board and wanting to replace you with one of their friends (this does happen!) or maybe because the company is trying to push you out the door.

In the last case, if a company wants to get rid of you but would have to pay you severance money to leave, one formula an boss might use is to demote you or push you aside to a job that doesn't admittedly have much responsibility to try to "force" you to look for an additional one job or plainly quit, so that they can avoid paying severance.

I have heard of numerous situations where this tactic appears to be in place. Unless you are near resignation age and don't mind waiting to see if your boss blinks first and offers to pay you out, you might end up having to make a decision as to whether or not you want to remain employed with this firm.

The first thing you need to do is figure out - or at least try to figure out - why you were demoted.

If the company is trying to get rid of you by making it difficult for you to stay, they probably won't admit what they're doing but you might have already seen the writing on the wall and already understand what is going on anyways!

However, if the demotion is explained to you and the reasons for it are stated, you can take the data and figure out if it's a fair decision and how you will deal with it.

If it is a fair decision in your mind and your demotion is warranted, it could be time to reconsider finding for a new job. Your work options with this company might be very itsybitsy at this point. Were you plainly in the wrong position or is it possible that the boss views your contributions very lightly? Also, you should figure out how you will address the reasons that you were demoted and if training or an improvement in your skills is required, how you will accomplish it.

If is not a fair decision and you feel that you have been unfairly wronged, you might reconsider legal performance or an additional one form of complaint depending on how strongly you feel about it and what your actual options are ie. Do you work for a company that offers an request for retrial process of some sort, is there someone in Human Resources you can speak with, etc?

Before you do whatever rash, take a step back and reconsider what you know about your demotion.

Once you have all the data you need, you can make a decision that will make sense for you for the long term.

I have seen cases where people who were demoted were plainly in the wrong job or company and once they found a new job that was great noteworthy to their skills, got their work back on track quickly.