How To Promote the Right Employee

As an employer or a manager, you promote an employee for three reasons:

• To give more responsibilities to a person who is capable of taking them up.
• To put the right person at the right helm of affairs so that the organization is benefited by his services at an enhanced level.
• To recognize and reward a person who has contributed to your organization.

Keeping these objectives in mind, an employer must consider promoting an employee in the most objective way. While interference of personal likes and dislikes in promoting an employee can’t be totally ruled out, the following guidelines will be helpful in promoting the right person in a more balanced way:

1. The employee must have demonstrated his capacity to take responsibility. A promotion means moving to a higher position involving more responsibilities. A person who ‘works’ but is unwilling to take responsibility for it, but expects his boss to take the blame if something goes wrong, is not the one fit for a promotion.
2. The employee must have shown decisiveness. The person should not be the type who runs up to his boss to take instructions even where he himself should have used his sense of judgment. This attitude may please many bosses, as it gives them a false sense of pride. But an indecisive person is not fit for a promotion. Another related trend in employee attitude to guard against is when he is encountering a problem for which a solution is beyond his limit of power. Under such circumstances, if the person approaches the boss with the problem as well as a suggestive solution, he could be a potential candidate for promotion.
3. The employee must be prepared to over-stretch himself when situation demands it. Does the service engineer put extra working hours at the customer’s site to make the critical machine run at the crucial juncture without expecting any special consideration for it? Does the Accounts clerk willingly extend a helping hand to the Sales Executive to sort of a dispute with a customer regarding a tax issue without saying, “it is not my work?”

   Such employees are potential candidates for promotion.

4. The employee must have good interpersonal skills along with specific job skills. Higher responsibility by way of promotion mostly involves managing more people under one’s responsibility. Some persons may be quite excellent in efficiently carrying out their work, but not too good in mingling with or in handling people. Interpersonal skills are very important – some times more important than technical skills in higher positions.
5. The employee should have a high sense of loyalty to the organization. This trait is gradually diminishing in the present day culture of job-hopping. However, if the person demonstrates his identification with the goals and values of the organization, if he does not act as a parasite to stealthily enjoy the perks and privileges from the organization by some devious means, then he should be considered for promotion. A person with long-standing experience of working in the organization sometimes has the core values of the organization better imbibed in them than someone joined relatively recently.

   The right mix of old blood and new blood will be the key to the stability and growth of the organization.

It is not always possible to get Mr. Perfect or Mr. Ideal promoted to a higher position. But by ensuring that the best of the lot is chosen for the promotion, you can ensure that the organization is benefiting better by the services of the person at the elevated position.