Is your new company exploiting you?
New hires already have enough challenges to face without exploitation, too. When an employer benefits from your work but treats you unjustly, you are being exploited.
As a new hire, you come into the work situation either as a saviour of sorts, who will finally help bring an end to an impossible workload situation or as a cause of extra work when someone has to do their own work and help train you as well.
The process of onboarding will make it seem that you are being aided and mentored by an experienced employee and integrated into the office culture, but things aren’t always as they may seem.
There are often worries that new employees have no experience, which can lead to discrimination. While it is true that you may not have specific experience with the role you are filling, you may have other skills to bring to the table that others are not aware of. You might be fresh out of university and have strong research skills. Or you might have come from a workplace that has process innovations that would be valuable to your new workplace.
Here are three ways to recognize if you are dealing with injustice:
1. There is Doubt About What You Say You Know
The people you now work with don’t know you yet. As a result, they can be skeptical, and doubt the truth or accuracy of what you say and your ideas. This can be detrimental when they don’t get the benefit of your new and possibly innovative perspectives.
2. You Are Excluded from Conversations
Every business has its own jargon. However, if fellow employees or management continuously use jargon that you would have no way of reasonably knowing as a new employee, they are excluding you from conversations. Being excluded can interfere with your ability to work and can prevent you from feeling valued as a contributor to the team.
3. You Are Denied the Ability to Make Decisions or to Take Action
Sometimes, when things go wrong, the new person is blamed, contributing to a perception that they aren’t able to do a good job. As a result, they aren’t asked to do tasks that need to be done because the belief is that they don’t know what they are doing and that they can’t make a good decision when confronted with a challenge.
True, it is not always unjust to be cautious when putting trust in someone who has just been hired. On the other hand, making assumptions that the new employee knows nothing but not finding out what they might know can be a loss to the company, which may have benefitted from that knowledge.
Another unnecessary loss? Your self esteem. You can tell that you have lost some self esteem if you find yourself unable to trust your own opinions, and you overthink things. This can make you afraid to take challenges and you will probably not be able to progress in the job.
