I see it all the time. The wife or husband is seen as HiPo so their inept spouse is given a pass. I’ve seen them put on teams where the team then has to pick up the slack for their inability. I’ve also seen them placed in made up roles and get paid to do nothing. Have one such person right now on my floor. I have seen her once in the past year. Her office is always empty. Some people thought she was transferred and they just hadn’t shipped her boxes. I asked what she does and she couldn’t explain it, said she is unique whatever that means. No one knows what she does. She isn’t on an org chart that I know of.
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There obviously are exceptions to this but there are also plenty of examples of couples benefitting from both being at ExxonMobil when it comes to next assignments and treatment in ranking. I’ve seen it go both ways. Some of the preferential treatment I’ve seen has been surprising.
Singapore has plenty of such. There is alot of management favouritism when comes to such spouses.
I was recently in a meeting with an employee who is tasked with identifying roles to live to the BTC (yes that is happening they are looking to eliminate jobs in the US still and move them to the BTC). The employee started to go off on how much more expensive employees with kids are to the company because of health insurance and especially expat related costs of moving kids overseas. Will be watching with interest to see if those with dogs instead of kids start to have a career advantage within the company.
Get ready to see the special treatment of trailing spouses on full display again in the upcoming assessment cycle!
I had an eye-opening experience, working for one of those trailing spouses in the Fuels Department in the UK. He was a really unpleasant, arrogant a-hole - full of himself and convinced he was as much of a high flyer as his wife. I met her as well (she worked in Controllers), and she was the complete opposite - very smart, very approachable and great interpersonal skills.
As for her husband, the one thing that I will always remember from him (apart from him never having a good word to say about anyone), was when management had a forum soon after the results of the UK employee survey were published. Someone asked a question about the performance and development system and why people may find that their low ranking didn't reflect the good feedback they received from their supervisor. His answer ? Well, it's over 20 years ago, so I may be paraphrasing slightly: "Don't blame your supervisor if your ranking is lower than expected. It just means you're cr@p!" What a S.O.B.
Last I heard, they were both in the US (Fairfax), where he was the big cheese in Fuels Product Quality (sounds like a non-job for a non-person, at that high a level).
PIP one get the second departure for free. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.
Then watch the other just follow. Can't imagine the at home drama this will cause.
nsi one will make sense, since one of them is just a shadow of the other.
I see examples all across the board of dual careers. Some are both strong performers.. and I do know of a few trailing spouses that are bench warmers so I absolutely see where the observation comes from. It grinds my gears when I see it because I'm out here working my tail off to be evaluated on my own worth and not my partners. Perception is very powerful and people aren't stupid.. we see when these examples of weak spouses (or nepotism) occur and are tolerated and are demotivated.
I think this is a common enough thread in negative EM feedback that it deserves some thought by HR. Oh well.
Most of these trailing spouses - the origin is Britain or a former Brit colony, am I wrong?
Realizing Amurikuh is former Brit colony(s) but I reference more recent.
BTW - Texas was never a Brit colony.
Mexican colonectomy?
From this forum? Lol. I would argue that the trend you are seeing is a result of this forum and not what you actually see with normal people.
Sorry but every oil and gas company does this. I doubt XOM wants to distinguish itself by rooting out nepotism. As an experienced hire, I know one refinery I worked at had it in the budget to create made up jobs and headcount for trailing spouses of managers and supervisors. Even in 2015-16 with small layoffs these extra headcount were carried on. It was expected in the culture up to the VP level. All the other refineries and business units did the same thing. Don’t keep your hopes up for this to change.
Seeing a trend here - nepotism over merit. We’ve lost our way. I think everyone can agree we do not promote the best and brightest, and we don’t understand how to be the best IOC.
I’ve seen this in expat positions with trailing spouses where the trailing spouse is literally put into a created position or into one where they have zero experience.
If one spouse is let go, likely the other is to follow. I know I will (my spouse is also employed with the company)
If you can't tell from this forum, there is a lot of hatred from people that are seperated from the company. While the still employed spouse may be OK with having a job, can't imagine the problems at home with one spouse jealous that the other is still employed. (I'm curious if the company thinks about this during ranking cycles).
There are way less HiPo employees with a trailing spouse than anything else that is a problem with different functions. While a problem, if you think this is the problem with EM.. Then you really deserve your PIP.
Dual careers are and should be prime targets, just layoff the less performing one. It's not like they still won't have an income plus it opens up opportunities for the well performing individuals. Unless both are extremely high preforming they need to look very hard at removing the underperforming spouse.
I saw a HiPo get the PIP or leave option this year but the low performance spouse didn’t get dropped. Was blown away that they didn’t get it instead of their spouse. Different groups in the same org.
Yeah, and it doesn't feel right to me that the spouse of my coworker who I am ranked against sits in my rank session and comments on my performance.
"Doesn't feel right to target coworkers" Wake up and smell the forced ranking. Welcome to #WeAreExxonMobil
If you're sacraficing your career as a trailing spouse your likely just two mediocre employees not married to a HiPo. What I see is typically the trailing spouse of a HiPo benefits by having assignments given to them they normally wouldn't be given if it weren't for their HiPo spouse or the company looks the other way and doesn't PIP them even though they are more deserving of it than those receiving it.
I think that the basis of this comment is just dead wrong.. I have seen way more dual career couples where both are highly rated individuals (both contribute to work decently) versus one being dead weight to the company.
Wtf d–g are you taking to come up with that nonsense? The comments don't even make any coherent sense.
They refuse to admit, but are now afraid and wounded by the blisters after risking all eggs into one basket. Ignoring the simplest concept of risk and return diversification. High school students can do better than this. At least one will be quietly looking out.
This thread bugs me. XOM terminated almost no one in the last 20 years. ...but it seems to be an ingrained bias that a trailing spouse gets special treatment...or is a slacker. That bias is also heavily weighted on one gender. In situations where it’s the other gender, you hear “lucky guy...golden ticket....as long as you can put up with her at home.” Anyway, the reality I’ve heard is that one spouse usually has to consciously sacrifice their career progression so that the other spouse can get the right opportunities? Fun? Doesn’t sound like it to me. It just doesn’t feel right to target coworkers right now.
Most dual career employees have one spouse that is a complete drain on the company
In employee forums, where anonymous questions are permitted, tough questions are now being asked - a phenomena which is quite unprecedented in a lethargic, politically correct environment such as the one prevailing at Imperial Oil, Canada.
These questions are probing why visible minorities and persons of color despite having solid educational credentials, impeccable work ethics and wide experience are failing to break through to management levels.
This is largely the case in business as well as corporate departments. The truth is that if you are a visible minority, your every action, performance, mannerism, style - everything you say or do is under the microscope and subject to harsh judgement and criticism by peers as well as unqualified and incompetent supervisors and managers. Some suggestions point to deeply entrenched, systemic racism that protects and promotes a certain race and gender even in so called multicultural Canada.
Look at the org charts if you have doubts. Walk around the campus - how many persons of color or visible minorities do you see occupying a private office??
Nevertheless, power couples abound in the organization, with huge take home pay and benefits. So much for D&I in multicultural Canada.
Their progression seems to be travelling spouse and subsequently become employees.. very interesting way of draining EM’s money.. recently there is a stop to it.. but many are waiting to be converted..
The worst was when I had one on my team and then I was dropped in the ranking for not “helping her be successful” when she missed a deadline and expected me to drop everything I was working on to save her.