How to Make Promotions Fair and Effective in Your Company

Career advancement is a process by which an employee of a company receives a greater share of their duties, a higher salary scale, or both. A promotion is not only beneficial to employees, but it is also very crucial for the employer or business owners. Employee promotions are a critical component of any organization's rewards and recognition program. Studies have found that up to 25% of employees who leave an organization do so due to lack of recognition. Internal promotion is a selection method in which the organization's existing employees are the candidates.

So, rather than looking for outside talent, it means promoting employees who have proven to be able to take on new responsibilities. Federal and state laws require most employers to make human resource decisions, such as promotions based on business requirements, rather than protected characteristics such as age, disability, gender, nationality, race, or religious affiliation. Before selecting the best candidate, the company must decide whether the position will be available first for internal promotion or whether it will be open to outsourcing. If employees consistently show any of these signs, it's probably time to consider them for a promotion. In a world where 53% of employees believe that promotions are unfair, it's time to start giving people more opportunities to make their potential visible. Promotions are usually granted on a discretionary basis or combined with a job offer that employees can apply for.

Policies that establish promotion criteria must include a disclaimer that any promotion is at the discretion of the organization. CEO and Company Leadership Must Commit to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. As expected, employees do not usually look favourably at dry promotions, and they should be avoided whenever possible. Wolfe advised sitting with internal candidates who weren't promoted and recognize what they do well and where they need to grow. The human resources department has a keen interest in ensuring that an organization's promotion process is well managed, helping to guide employees' career paths, maintaining clear policies, and keeping workers engaged when they are not promoted. Wolfe added that promotion guidelines should be based on achievements rather than just meeting benchmarks on a timeline.

Before announcing the company-wide promotion, we recommend that you first consider meeting with the team that will be most affected by the change. Once a decision has been made to promote an employee, the last step in the process is to announce them to the company. Each of these factors must be evaluated by a people committee that will determine which employees are most deserving of promotion at the specific time. Inequality and discrimination are everywhere in industries and jobs, in companies of all sizes - even in those giants that publicly assert their racial equity stance such as Amazon. By systematically empowering leaders at all levels to use these principles within their teams, the results will be noticeable as more people in the company reconnect with their aspirations, feel a sense of sponsorship, extend trust to leaders when decisions are made on promotions and they get excited about what they can achieve as a valued member of a winning team. Developing a pattern of employee evaluations that tracks the employee's professional development, work patterns, attributes and shortcomings, and other characteristics that may determine whether this person has the leadership qualities necessary for a promotion is essential.

This will help ensure fairness and effectiveness when making promotions within your company.

Esther Woodcock
Esther Woodcock

Esther has been in Marketing field for 15 years