Why so many workers are turning down promotions

Less than half of Canadians would take a promotion if it meant more time at work. And just about nobody wants to manage their coworkers

THE LURE OF a promotion and a fancy new title ain’t as appealing as it used to be for Canadian employees. At least, that’s the findings of a new survey of working adults put out by the app Hint (an astrology-based app, so make of this what you will).

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According to its survey, nearly six in 10 Canadians said they would turn down a promotion if it meant they would need to spend more time at work or be available and reachable outside of normal hours, even if the job paid more. Forty-one per cent of employees told the survey they had avoided applying for a promotion simply because they were worried about increased hours and an expectation that they be reachable even after the office closes.

While the source of this survey might raise an eyebrow, the findings shouldn’t: it tracks closely with a waning enthusiasm for the traditional climb up the career ladder, with workers increasingly viewing promotion with skepticism and weighing salary increases more critically against things like work-life balance and expectations of availability. That number goes up when looking at workers under 34, where 68 per cent (more than two thirds!) said they would reject a promotion that included a sacrifice of work-life balance.

“The career ladder is becoming less one-dimensional,” said Hint’s public relations manager Leigh Roberts, speaking to The Globe and Mail about the survey. “Workers increasingly see several possible versions of career success; it’s not just your position, it’s, ‘Am I earning more money?’ ‘Do I have more expertise?’ ‘Have I learned more?’ ‘Do I have more autonomy?’ rather than just more people to manage.”

A simpler way of putting it though might just be that all promotions are not created equally, and nobody wants to be a manager anymore. The survey found that 59 per cent of workers would be fine with promotions that don’t put them on the people management track. “If something happens past working hours, the silent expectation is that you’re going to manage that,” said Nancy D’Onofrio of Randstad Canada. “The higher you climb the ranks in your organization, the more that expectation is there.”

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But even leaving aside the manager question, it does seem that workers in Canada are viewing promotion as a more holistic decision to be made rather than something to be reflexively pursued.

“The central divide is no longer simply between ambitious and unambitious workers,” the Hint app concluded. “It is between promotions that expand a career and promotions that quietly expand the working day. For many respondents, a higher position remains attractive only when it does not require work to become a permanent presence in the rest of their lives.” Kieran Delamont