• Know more about IRSSE batches of Direct officers

Promotions

According to Pigours and Myers, ‘Promotion is advancement of an employee to a better job – better in terms of greater responsibility, more prestige or status, greater skill and especially increased rate of pay or salary”.

Arun Monappa and Mirza S Saiyadain defined promotion as “the upward reassignment of an individual in an organization’s hierarchy, accompanied by increased responsibilities, enhanced status and usually with increased income though not always so”.

Conditions of promotions are:

• Reassignment of higher level job to an employee than what he is presently performing
• The employee will naturally be delegated with greater responsibility and authority than what he has had earlier. Promotion normally accompanied higher pay. It means in some cases, the employee perform higher level job and receive the salary related to the lower level job.
• Promotion may be temporary or permanent depending upon the organizational needs and employee performance.

Types of Promotion:

1. Vertical Promotion
2. Up gradation
3. Dry Promotion

Purposes of  Promotion:

• To utilize the employee’s skill knowledge at the appropriate level in the organizational hierarchy
• To develop competitive spirit and inculcate the zeal in the employees to acquire the skill, knowledge etc. required by higher level jobs.
• To develop competent internal source of employees ready to take up jobs at higher levels in the changing environment.
• To promote employees’ self development and make them await their turn of promotions. It reduces labour turnover.
• To promote a feeling of contentment with the existing conditions of the company and a sense of belongingness.
• To promote interest in training, development programmes and in team development areas.
• To build loyalty and to boost morale.
• To reward committed and loyal employees
• To get rid of the problems created by the leaders of workers’ unions by promoting them to the officers’ levels where they are less effective in creating problems.
• Promotion places the employees in a position where an employee’s skills and knowledge can be better utilized.
• It creates and increases the interest of other employees in the company as they believe that they will also get their turn.
• It creates among employees a feeling of content with the existing conditions of work and employment.
• It increases interest in acquiring h9gher qualifications, in training and in self development with a view to meet the requirements of promotion.
• It improves morale and job satisfaction
• Ultimately it improves organizational health.

Benefits of Promotion

Promotion Principles:

1. it should be consistent in the sense that policy should be applied uniformly to all employees irrespective of the background of the persons,
2.  it should be fair and impartial.
3. systematic line of promotion channel should be incorporated,
4. it should provide equal opportunities for promotion in all categories of jobs, departments and regions of an organization,
5. it should ensure open policy in the sense that every eligible employee should be considered for promotion rather than a closed system,
6. it should contain clear cut norms and criteria for judging merit, length of service, potentiality etc.
7. appropriate authority should be entrusted with the task of making a final decision, it should contain promotional counseling, encouragement, guidance and follow-up regarding promotional opportunities, job requirements and acquiring the required skills, knowledge etc.

Bases of Promotion:

1.  Merit as a basis of Promotion:  skill, knowledge, ability, efficiency as aptitude as measured from educational, training and past employment record.

Advantages:

i.            The resourced of higher order of an employee can be better utilized at higher level It results in maximum utilization of human resources in an organization.

ii.            Competent employees are motivated to exert all their resources and contribute them to the organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

iii.             It works as golden hand-cuffs regarding employee turnover.

iv.            It continuously encourages the employees to acquire

Demerits:

1. Measurement or judging of merit is highly difficult.
2. Many people, particularly trade union leaders, distrust the management’s integrity in judging merit.
3. The techniques of merit measurement are subjective.
4. Merit denotes mostly the past achievements, efficiency but not the future success. Hence, the purpose of promotion may not be served if merit is taken as the sole criteria for promotion.
5. Seniority as a Basis of Promotion: refers to relative length of service in the same job and in the same organization. The logic behind this as a basis of promotion is that there is a positive correlation between the length of service in the same job and the amount of knowledge and the level of skill acquired by an employee is an organization.
   1. It is relatively easy to measure the length of service and judge the seniority.
   2. There would be full support of the trade unions to this system.
   3. Every party trusts the management’s action as there is no scope for favouritism and discrimination and judgement.
   4. It gives a sense of certainty of getting promotion to every employee and of their turn of promotion.
   5. Senior employees will have a sense of satisfaction to this system as the older employees are respected and their inefficiency cannot be pointed out.
   6. It minimizes the scope for grievances and conflicts regarding promotion

Advantages:

Demerits:

1. The assumption that the employees learn more relatively with length of service is not valid.
2. It demotivates the young and more competent employees and results in employee turnover particularly among the dynamic force.
3. It kills the zeal and interest to develop as everybody will be promoted with or without improvement.
4. Organizational effectiveness may be diminished through the declaration of the human resources effectiveness as the human resources consists of mostly undynamic and old blood.
5. Judging seniority though it seems to be easy in the theoretical sense, it is highly difficult in practice.

Seniority-cum-Merit Promotion:

Ways in striking balance between seniority and merit

1. Minimum length of service and merit
2. Measurement of seniority and merit through a common factor
3. Minimum merit and seniority

Problems with promotion:

Glass Ceiling- Glass ceiling is an invisible barrier to promotion based in race, community, tribe, nationality, gender etc.

Promotion disappoints come employees

Some employees refuse promotion

Transfer

“a lateral shift causing movement of individuals from one position to another usually without involving any marked change in duties, responsibilities, skills needed or compensation”

Transfer is defined as “… the moving of an employee from one job to another. It may involve a promotion, demotion or no change in job status other than moving from one job to another”.

1. Employee initiated Transfer (1) Temporary Transfer (2) Permanent Transfer
2. Company initiated Transfer (1) Temporary transfer  (2) Permanent Transfer
3. Public Initiated Transfer