I have been with my current employer since 2004, and have recently found out that my job title has been changed at some point without me been made aware of it. The new title is more general than my original job title, and because of this I feel the new title undermines my position and skill set within the company.

Several other members of staff have had this ‘new’ title since they started because they work in a more general role, however i joined the company specifically for the specialist role (which my ‘original’ job title represented), and i am concerned that by renaming my job in with everyone else the perceived value of my skills is being reduced. In the last 12 months the work in my specialist area has deminished, however i have no desire to work in just the ‘general’ role which i feel this new title represents, and i wonder if this is a subtle way of encouraging me to leave, rather than admitting the role is no longer required and making me redundant.

To further complicate things the company was taken over in 2007 and the effects of the new ownership and mergers with their other subsidaries is now underway, and i am unsure how my ‘new’ job title will affect the outcome of any duplicate-role-elimination (ie redundancies) which these mergers will result in.

I guess my main question is should i have had notification when my job title was changed – which could have been any time in the last few years? Have they created grounds for constructive dismissal or some other wrong-doing, as i feel very put out by the way this has happened?

(I spotted the new job title on a form at a recent ‘doesnt happen every year’ annual one-on-one review meeting with my line manager, and subsequently raised it with him as something i was unhappy with). I asked HR what my official job title was, and their reply confirmed that is was ‘the new one’, however they have not stated if/when this changed, or that it is new.)

Regards
Mark