PROMOTION

A promotion is an increase in rank that may also be accompanied by an increase in pay, benefits, and responsibility. Majority of people consider promotions in a positive manner, as they denote that the person being promoted is a successful, valuable, and useful individual. In several organizations, individuals actively work for achieving promotion and its related benefits. 

Typically, an employee is rewarded with a promotion when he or she performs outstanding work, or shows aptitude for a position with greater responsibility. This is often a reason for being happy, as it shows that the employee possesses a potential for development and deserves a long employment within the company. A promotion may consist of supervisory responsibilities, as the promoted employee becomes more responsible for administrative assistants and other staff. These responsibilities should not be considered in a light way, as most employees seek their supervisors for guidance and examples of appropriate workplace behavior.

A promotion may also require greater amount of work, which accompanies with general increases in responsibility, may be more complex or more interesting, however, so most employees are cheerful to get promotion. In fact, the promotion is a matter of recognition by the employer of the increased workload and status of the employee, and most employers give a pay raise along with a promotion and employees may become eligible for more benefits. In a ranked system like the military the promotion may accompany an increase in rank or grade, and the employee's salary is determined in terms of a scale of pay. Offer of a promotion and congrats are usually given by a supervisor or high ranking person in the company. If you have been chosen for a promotion, be sure that this is a good opportunity to negotiate, such as a request for a change in duty hours, as the employer is indicating that you are a valuable employee. 

All people do not consider promotions as a cause for engaging in festivities. Some persons, for example, prefer to remain at the same rank so that they can stay in the existing field in professions. Others relish jobs with little responsibilities, despite the lower pay. Such individuals may reject a promotion.

When vacancies occur in an organization, they can be filled up from internal promotion or external recruitment.  Several organizations consider it better to fill up the vacancies by the external candidates through the selection procedure, where the internal candidates may also apply for the post and may be tested and selected for a high level job in the organizational hierarchy at par with external candidates. Such a process is called ‘selection’. If the organization prefers to fill a vacancy only by the internal candidates, and assigns the high level job to the selected employee from within the organization through promotion, such upward movement is termed as promotion.

According to Prof. Khanka, promotion is vertical movement of an employee within the organization from one job to another higher one, with enhancement in salary, status and responsibilities.

According to Paul Pigors.,” Promotion is An advancement of an employee to a better job- better in terms of greater responsibilities, higher prestige or status, more skills 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 organisation’s hierarchy, where more responsibilities, status and income usually accompany. 

Thus the important conditions of promotion are:

1. Reassignment of a high level job to an employee than what he is presently performing,
2. The employee will naturally be delegated with greater responsibility and authority than what he has had earlier.
3. Promotion normally accompanies higher pay. It means that in some cases, the employees perform at a high level job and receive the salary related to the lower level job. For example, if a University Professor is promoted to the next higher level of the faculty position, i.e. Dean of the Faculty, he will not receive any increase in salary. Such promotion is called dry promotions.  Promotions may be temporary or permanent depending upon the organizational needs and employee performance

 OBJECTIVES OF PROMOTION

There are number of objectives for which organizations promote their employees:
1. For the optimum utilization of the employees’ skill, knowledge at the appropriate level in the organizational hierarchy resulting in organizational effectiveness and employee satisfaction. 
2. For the development of competitive spirit and inculcate the enthusiasm in the employees to acquire the skill, knowledge etc. needed for the higher level jobs.
 3. To develop competent internal source of employees ready to take up jobs at higher levels in the changing environment. 
4. For the promotion of a feeling of content with the existing conditions of the company and a sense of belongingness to the company.
 5. To promote employee’s self- development and be ready for the promotion as and when their turn of promotion occurs. 
6. To promote interest in training, development programmes and in team development areas. 
7. To get rid of the problems created by the leaders of workers’ unions by promoting them in the officers’ levels where they are less effective in creating problems.

There are different bases of promotion depending upon their nature, size, management etc. Commonly, they may combine into two or more basis of promotion. The well-established bases of promotion are seniority or merit or a combination thereof. The ‘favouritism’ is the other type of basis of promotion which is used in all types of organizations under different shades.
Managers should have the understanding of effectiveness of each basis in promoting the right man to the right job.

TYPES OF PROMOTION 

Generally, there are three types of promotion viz. Vertical Promotion, Up-gradation and Dry Promotion

Vertical promotion results in a vertical movement of an employee to the next higher level, in the organizational hierarchy with greater responsibility, authority, pay and status.
Up-gradation type of promotion implies that the job is upgraded in the organizational hierarchy. As a result of up-gradation, employees get more salary, higher authority and responsibility.
With Dry Promotion the employee moves to the next higher level in the organizational hierarchy with greater responsibility, authority and status without any increase in salary.

 BASES OF PROMOTION

There are different bases of promotion depending upon their nature, size, management etc. Commonly, they may combine into two or more basis of promotion. The well-established bases of promotion are seniority or merit or a combination thereof. The ‘favouritism’ is the other type of basis of promotion which is used in all types of organizations under different shades. Managers should have the understanding of effectiveness of each basis in promoting the right man to the right job.

Competence as a Basis of Promotion

Competence denotes as an employee’s job skills, knowledge, talent, creative abilities, efficiency and aptitude measured from his education, training and past employment record. It is argued that seniority should be disregarded only when an employee with less seniority possessed substantial competence over and above the employees with greater seniority.

          Prof. Dessler contends that if promotion is based on competence, competence needs to be fairly defined and measured. He replies that defining and measuring past performance is a fairly straightforward matter. Often jobs are fairly defined standards of competence are established and appraisal techniques are applied to measure the employees’ performance. However, promotion also needs predicting the individual’s potential performance. Therefore, a valid procedure for predicting an employee’s future performance is needed. Several employers reply on past performance as a guide. They assume that an individual’s past performance can assist in extrapolating the future performance. Employers also use tests to evaluate promotable persons and identify employees with managerial potential. Assessment centers are also used to assess management potential.

According to Prof. Subba Rao, the merit as a basis of promotion has the following advantages:

• The organizations can better utilize the resources of higher order of an employee at higher level,
• Competent employees exert all their efforts and contribute to the organizational efficiency and effectiveness.
• It reduces employee turnover,
• The employees are encouraged continuously to acquire new skills, knowledge etc. for their all-round development.

Despite these advantages, the competence system suffers from some demerits as.

• Accurate measure or judging of merits is highly difficult.
• Many people, particularly trade union leaders, distrust the management’s integrity in judging competence.
• The techniques of merit measurement are subjective. 
• Competence denotes mostly the prior achievement and the level of efficiency but not the potential performance. Hence, the purpose of promotion may be defeated if merit is taken as the sold criteria for promotion.

Seniority as a basis for promotion

Management often consider the question whether promotion is to be based on seniority or competence, or a combination of the competence and seniority. If employees are to be motivated, promotion based on competence is preferred. The success in using competence as a sole criterion depends on different conditions.  If the firm is unionized collective bargaining agreement usually keeps a clause that stresses upon seniority in promotions. It is often argued that in the promotion of employees to higher paid jobs, when competence, merit, capacity and ability are same, employees with higher seniority should be given preference. However, this does not close the door for an individual with less seniority but more competence for being promoted. The organizations governed by civil service regulation also prefer seniority to competence s the basis for promotion.

          Seniority based promotions suffers from certain limitations.

• It is assumed that the employees learn more with length of service does not hold as employees may learn up to a certain stage, and learning capabilities may diminish beyond a certain age.
• Young and competent employees get de-motivated which leads to greater employee turnover.
• Seniority based promotion mars the zeal and interest to develop, as everybody will be promoted without considering any all-round growth or promise.
• Judging the seniority, though it might seem to be easy conceptually, is highly difficult in practice as the problems of job seniority, company seniority, zonal/regional seniority, service in different organizations, experience as apprentice trainee, trainee, researcher, length of service not only by days but by hours and minutes will come up for consideration.