101: Changing titles
Job titles out there now didn’t exist a decade ago: chief talent officer, for example. Many employees welcome broader titles, seeing professional-development benefits to their resumes. But why do companies change employee job titles, and what potential value does it offer to them?
They engage millennials. You’ve seen job titles like rockstar and ninja out there. Titles more exciting than just associate can make a new, younger employee feel valued and help structure how they feel about their role in an organization, writes Rachel Premack at BusinessInsider.com. “These sort of zesty job titles are nothing new, particularly in the tech world,” she writes. “But the practice seems to have trickled down to, for example, OneAmerica, a financial-services firm based in Indianapolis, which just changed its humdrum role of data analyst to data wrangler.”
They broaden employees’ scope of collaboration. New, more-encompassing job titles can open lines of communication across departments, a good thing for any company. “Job titles aren’t the only reason that people don’t get together, but titles do limit interactions in ways that deserve attention,” writes Inc.com’s Steve Farber. Otherwise, why would a sales manager think about improvements to a company’s sales strategy, for example?
They show action around crisis. Christine Hayward is executive director of IIC Partners, an Oregon-based executive search company. She told Forbes companies do and can use new titles as a way to address corporate concerns. “In the wake of serious workplace accusations and a shakeup of its senior leadership, CBS now has a chief people officer and a chief business ethics and compliance officer,” she writes. “Airbnb appointed its first chief trust officer to focus on the online and offline safety of its billions of worldwide customers.”
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