Hasty Promotion Causes Trouble?!

Invalid promotion will make the enterprise efficiency Low, promoting an incompetent employee will even have a direct adverse impact on the organization, and unfair promotion will also cause resistance, suspicion and worry of employees.

When receiving the resignation letter from Yang Yu, the senior technical director, Shi Hong, the human resources manager, was both surprised and regretful. "It's all because of promotion!" Shi Hong said regretfully, "The company lacks a clear and open promotion standard and a powerful promotion evaluation tool, which led to employees leaving their jobs because they thought promotion was unfair, and the company lost a senior technician, which was a huge loss!"

Missing promotion criteria

"For a long time, the basis for promotion of middle managers and above in the company is according to Employees' past performance and suggestions from their line supervisors. In fact, we also know that this is not a very reliable way, because past performance in a certain position cannot accurately predict future performance, especially for higher level positions. ”Shi Hong said, "The problem is that the company lacks an effective evaluation system and an appropriate evaluation tool to evaluate the potential of employees. This gives HR, when promoting employees, only to rely on the suggestions of their line supervisors and the results of performance evaluation."

This promotion system has been implemented since the company was founded in 2003. It has been nearly three years, and there has been no conflict. But this time, when the manager of the technical department left his post, he was promoted. In Shi Hong's words, he hit a big stone.

After the manager proposed his intention to resign, the company's senior executives decided not to take the practice of external air landing, but to choose internal promotion.

The Technology Department has two senior technical supervisor positions under the manager, one is Yang Yu, who is responsible for program development, and the other is Liu Zhi, who is responsible for software module research and development. Each of them is responsible for leading a technical team to complete the tasks assigned by the Manager of the Technology Department. "It is impossible to judge simply from the past assessment results, because the performance of these two senior technical directors in the past two years is excellent."

In this case, Shi Hong believes that the personal advice of the manager of the technical department will become very It's important. "In the absence of clear promotion standards, we can only rely more on personal subjective suggestions." Shi Hong said afterwards that she also believed that this was the main reason for promotion conflicts.

Hasty promotion decision

To this end, Shi Hong made a special interview with the outgoing manager of the Technology Department for up to three hours to listen to his suggestions and views on the two subordinates.

The information provided by the manager of the technology department is that Yang Yu, the director of program development, is very professional and gentle. Sometimes he gets along well with his subordinates, but when he is stubborn, he often conflicts. He is not good at controlling his emotions and is easily excited. Fortunately, he is a straightforward person and never bears grudges. It is very suitable to be a professional technician. Liu Zhi, the R&D director, is modest, gentle and introverted, which is liked by department employees and colleagues in other departments. However, he lacks innovation impulse and awareness, and is somewhat mediocre in technological innovation.

"From this information alone, HR faces a difficult problem: both have advantages, but both have major shortcomings. ”Shi Hong found it hard to choose between them. The manager of the Technology Department suggested that she make a thorough investigation from 25 employees of the Technology Department, or find some core technicians to communicate and understand their tendencies.

One word reminds the dreamer. According to the suggestions of the manager of the technology department, Shi Hong communicated with eight core technicians to understand their comments on the two supervisors. "The information obtained through communication tells me that these employees generally have a good opinion of Liu Zhizhi, the R&D director, because he is easier to get along with." Shi Hong said, "In addition, one of the important messages they sent to me is that Yang Yu, the program development director, is a technical employee who is not good at developing in the management line and is more suitable for taking a professional line, which is consistent with the information given to me by the technical manager."

The communication results enhanced Shi Hong's confidence in promoting Liu Zhi, the R&D director. In her proposal report to senior executives, she listed two advantages and disadvantages

Then, the company made the appointment decision: Liu Zhi, the R&D director, took over the position of manager, and Yang Yu, the program development director, appointed senior program development engineer and manager assistant. Shi Hong's original intention is to create a balance and let the two people coordinate with the management department.

Failed promotion decision

But the situation after that far exceeded Shi Hong's expectations.

First of all, some unknowing technicians believe that Yang Yu's technical ability is far better than Liu Zhi's. Although he is a little grumpy, it does not affect the innovative work of his team. Although Liu Zhi is well liked by his colleagues, it is almost impossible to expect him to lead the department to make breakthrough progress. In addition, many employees also questioned the company's promotion criteria: why not let a person with outstanding technical ability get a promotion opportunity?

What made Shi Hong even more worried was that Yang Yu's reaction was very intense. "He told me frankly that he really wanted to transition from a professional technician role to a management role, which is his career development plan." Shi Hong said, "But I didn't know this before. This is obviously the biggest mistake in the whole promotion decision-making process."

A month later, Yang Yu left the company very firmly. Although HR provided Liu Zhi with a lot of training and assistance, Liu Zhi, who was gentle in nature, still failed to control the highly publicized technicians, especially those employees who would not have prejudice against promotion opportunities even if they were highly skilled. Less than four months after Liu Zhi became the manager, Liu Zhi, who was struggling to carry out his work, also submitted his resignation letter.

"Ineffective promotion will make the enterprise inefficient, promoting an incompetent employee will even have a direct adverse impact on the organization, and unfair promotion will also cause employees' resistance, suspicion and worry." Shi Hong still resents this, "Therefore, it is very important to establish a structured process for internal promotion to streamline and clarify the important standards for promotion decisions, which is very important to increase employee loyalty and reduce employee turnover."

Five steps to make an effective promotion decision

Determine the promotion method. There are many methods for employees, including position ladder, position adjustment, position competition and career path. In this case, HR is a promotion that makes position adjustment for the need of personnel adjustment. In the face of two relatively suitable candidates, neither the understanding of employee management potential nor the investigation and evaluation of the future development direction of employees were made.

Clarify and publicize promotion conditions. Each position has specific and clear job responsibilities, and the required conditions and qualifications should be listed. In this case, HR ignored a very important task: to collect every employee's current position, experience and the conditions required by the superior position at ordinary times. According to this, we can know whether the employee meets the promotion conditions, and what additional training is needed if the employee does not meet the conditions. When a vacancy occurs, qualified promoters can be selected from the information. If it is found that there is a lack of suitable candidates internally, external recruitment must be considered. When making internal promotion of position adjustment, it is recommended that HR clarify and disclose the qualifications to internal employees.

Evaluate candidate qualifications. Conduct qualification evaluation on potential candidates, including knowledge, skills and personal qualities. The evaluation method includes three aspects: performance evaluation, feedback and suggestions from line supervisors/subordinates, and information collected by HR at ordinary times. In this case, although HR has achieved the above two assessments, it has not made a comprehensive assessment of the information it usually has, and only relies on the subjective views of others to make a promotion decision, which is obviously insufficient and difficult to be objective. It is difficult to make a very accurate assessment only based on the suggestions of line supervisors/subordinates, and the data collection made by HR can be an effective supplement to the formal assessment.

Communicate with candidates. This process is to assess the desire and competence of potential candidates for new positions. On the one hand, examine the candidate's willingness to assume a new position; on the other hand, understand the candidate's competence directly through communication. This process is similar to the interview process of open recruitment and is indispensable. An important reason for the failure of this case is that there was no face-to-face communication with the two candidates to understand their willingness to take up a new position, which led HR to make a biased judgment on the program development director.

　　 Publicly make promotion decisions. After the communication with the candidate, HR can make a promotion decision after having a more accurate grasp of the position needs and the candidate's qualifications and competencies.