Introduction 

When there are vacancies in an organisation, they can be filled up by internal or external candidates. Though the organisation prefers to fill up the vacancies by the external candidates through the selection procedure, the internal candidates may also apply for the post and may be tested and selected for a higher level job in the organizational hierarchy at par with external candidates. Is such upward movement of an employee a promotion? Or is it purely selection? It is purely a selection. If the organisation prefers to fill a vacancy only by the internal candidates, it assigns that higher level job to the selected employee from within through promotional tests. Such upward movement can be said as 'promotion.'

Meaning

According to Paul Pigours and Charles A. 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.” According to Pulapa Subba Rao, “Promotion is the reassignment of a higher level job (which is not supposed to be filled through external recruitment/ selection modes) to an internal employee with delegation of responsibilities and authority required to perform that higher level job and normally with higher pay".

Thus, the main conditions of promotion 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 accompanies higher pay. It means that in some cases, the employees perform higher 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 promotion. Promotions may be temporary or permanent depending upon the organizational needs and employee performance.

Types of promotion

As discussed earlier, promotion is of three types viz. Vertical Promotion,  Upgradation and Dry Promotion.

1. Vertical Promotion

Under this type of promotion, employee is moved to the next higher level, in the organizational hierarchy with greater responsibility, authority, pay and status.

2. Upgradation

Under this type of promotion, the job is upgraded in the organizational hierarchy. Consequently, the employee gets more salary, higher authority and responsibility. For example, the job of medical officer in Railways which was in Group C is upgraded as Group B position.

3. Dry Promotion

Under this promotion, the employee is moved to the next higher level in the organizational hierarchy with greater responsibility, authority and status without any increase in salary.

Purposes of promotion

Organisations promote the employees with a view to achieve the following purposes:

• To utilize the employee's skill, knowledge at the appropriate level in the organizational hierarchy resulting in organizational effectiveness and employee satisfaction.

• 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 labor 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. .

Having discussed the purposes of promotion, now we study the bases of promotion.

Bases of promotion

Organisations adopt different bases of promotion depending upon their nature, size, management etc. Generally, they may combine two or more bases of promotion. The well-established bases of promotion are seniority and merit. The other basis of promotion which is well practiced in all types of organisations under different shades is favoritism. Organisations should have an idea of effectiveness of each basis in promoting the right man to the job.

A. Merit as a basis of promotion

Merit is taken to denote an individual employee's skill, knowledge, ability, efficiency and aptitude as measured from educational, training and past employment record. The advantages of the merit system of promotion are:

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

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

• It works as golden hand-cuffs regarding employee turnover

• Further it continuously encourages the employees to acquire new skills, knowledge etc. for all-round development.

Despite these advantages, the merit system suffers from some demerits. They are:

• Measurement or judging of merit is highly difficult.

• Many people, particularly trade union leaders, distrust the management's integrity in judging merit.

• The techniques of merit measurement are subjective.

• Merit denotes mostly the past achievement, 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

B. Seniority as a basis of promotion

Seniority refers to relative length of service in the same job and in the same organisation. The logic behind considering the seniority 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 in an organisation. This system is also based on the custom that the first in should be given first chance in all benefits and privileges.

The advantages of seniority as a basis of promotion are:

• It is relatively easy to measure the length of service and judge the seniority

• There would be full support of the trade unions to this system

• Every party trusts the management's action as there is no scope for favouritism  and discrimination and judgment

• It gives a sense of certainty of getting promotion to every employee and of their turn of promotion.

• Senior employees will have a sense of satisfaction to this system as the older employees are respected and their inefficiency cannot be pointed out.

• It minimizes the scope for grievances and conflicts regarding promotion.

• This system seems to serve the purpose in the sense that employees may learn more with increase in the length of service.

In spite of these merits, this system also suffers from certain limitations. They are:

• The assumption that the employees learn more relatively with length of service is not valid as this assumption has reverse effect. In other words, employees learn up to a certain age and beyond that stage, the learning ability that is the cognitive process diminishes.

• It demotivates the young and more competent employees and results in employee turnover particularly among the dynamic force.

• It kills the zeal and interest to develop as everybody will be promoted with or without improvement.

• Organizational effectiveness may be diminished through the deceleration of the human resources effectiveness as the human resources consist of mostly undynamic and old blood.

• Judging the seniority though it seems to be easy in the theoretical sense, it is highly difficult in practice as the problems like job seniority, company seniority, zonal/regional seniority, service in different organisations, experience as apprentice trainee, trainee researcher, length of service not only by days but by hours and minutes will crop up

Thus, the two main bases of promotion enjoy certain advantages and at the same time suffer from certain limitations. Hence, a combination of both of them may be regarded as an effective basis of promotion.

C. Seniority-cum-merit

Managements mostly prefer merit as the basis of promotion as they are interested in enriching its human resources. But trade unions favor seniority as the sole basis for promotion with a view to satisfy the interests of majority of their members.

Hence, a combination of both seniority and merit can be considered as the basis for promotion satisfying the management for organisational effectiveness and the employees and trade unions for respecting the length of service. A balance between seniority and merit should be struck and new basis developed. There are several ways in striking the balance between these two bases:

1. Minimum Length of Service and Merit

Under this method, all those employees who complete the minimum service, say five years, are made eligible for promotion and then merit is taken as the sole criteria for selecting the employee for promotion from the eligible candidates. Most of the commercial banks in India have been following this method for promoting the employees from clerk's position to officer's position.

2. Measurements of Seniority and Merit through a Common Factor

3. Minimum Merit and Seniority

In contrast to the earlier methods, minimum score of merit which is necessary for the acceptable performance on future job is determined and all the candidates who secure minimum scores are declared as eligible candidates. Candidates are selected for promotion based on their seniority only from the eligible candidates.

Benefits of promotion

Promotion of employees from lower ranks to higher positions benefits the organisation as well as employees:

• 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 higher qualifications, in training and in self-development with a view to meet the requirements of promotion

• Promotion improves employee morale and job satisfaction

• Ultimately it improves organizational health.

Problems with promotion

Though promotion benefits the employee and the organisation, it creates certain problems. They are glass ceiling disappointment of the candidates, refusal of promotions etc.

1. Glass Ceiling

Glass ceiling is an invisible barrier to promotion based on race, community, tribe, nationality, gender etc. This term is used widely in multinational companies.

2. Promotion Disappoints some Employees

Some employees who are not promoted will be disappointed when their colleagues with similar qualifications and experience are promoted either due to favoritism or due to the lack of systematic promotion policy. Employees may develop negative attitude and reduce their contributions to the organisation and prevent organizational and individual advancement.

3. Some Employees Refuse Promotion

There is a general tendency that an employee accepts promotion. But there are several incidents where employees refuse promotions. These incidents include promotion together with transfer to an unwanted place, promotion to that level where the employee feels that he will be quite incompetent to carry out the job, delegation of unwanted responsibilities and when trade union leaders feel that promotion causes damage to their position in the trade union.

The other problems associated with promotion are: some superiors will not relieve their subordinates who are promoted because of their indispensability in the present job and inequality in promotional opportunities in different departments, regions and categories of jobs.

Promotion problems can be minimized through career counseling by the superiors and by formulating systematic promotion principles.

Promotion principles

Every organisation has to specify clearly its policy regarding promotion based on its corporate policy. The basic characteristics of a systematic promotion policy are:

• It should be consistent in the sense that policy should be applied uniformly to all employees irrespective of the background of the persons

• It should be fair and impartial. In other words, it should not give room for nepotism, favoritism etc.

• Systematic line of promotion channel should be incorporated

• It should provide equal opportunities for promotion in all categories of jobs, departments and regions of an organisation

• It should ensure open policy in the sense that every eligible employee should be considered for promotion rather than a closed system which considers only a class of employees

• It should contain clear cut norms and criteria for judging merit, length of service, potentiality etc.

• Appropriate authority should be entrusted with the task of making a final decision

• Favoritism should not be taken as a basis for promotion

It should contain promotional counseling, encouragement, guidance and follow-up regarding promotional opportunities, job requirements and acquiring the required skills, knowledge etc. it should also contain reinforcing the future chances in the minds of rejected candidates and a provision for challenging the management's decision and action by the employee or union within the limits of promotion policy.

References

P.Subba Rao, Essentials Of Human Resource Management And Industrial Relations, Himayala Publishing House, Edition 2014