{"id":26465,"date":"2021-02-04T09:31:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T13:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=26465"},"modified":"2021-02-14T23:40:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T03:40:52","slug":"how-to-promote-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-to-promote-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Promote Employees: A Merit-Based System"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Do you want to know how to promote employees? What do managers need to know about promotions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning how to promote employees is an important part of being a manager. You’ll need to know when people should be promoted, and how to actually go about the promotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to find out how to promote employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

How to Promote Employees Based on Performance<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Promotions should be based on performance because when you promote someone, you create a role model<\/a> and show what qualities (high performance) you value.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that when you promote someone who\u2019s exceeding <\/em>expectations, her performance will actually decrease<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>in the new position to merely meeting <\/em>expectations. This is because she\u2019s still learning the role and navigating new responsibilities. As she gets more experience, training, and motivation, her performance will improve and she\u2019ll start exceeding expectations again. Keep this in mind when learning how to promote employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may fear promoting exceptional people because you don’t want their performance to decrease, even temporarily. However, if you <\/strong>don\u2019t <\/em><\/strong>promote them, you\u2019re wasting a resource.<\/strong> Eventually, they lose motivation, stop exceeding expectations and drop back to only meeting them, and settle for being average. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you promote someone to a position that she\u2019s not even able to meet <\/em>expectations in, it\u2019s not the failure of the employee, it\u2019s the failure of management\u2014you made a bad judgment call about her abilities. In this situation, you can fire her (which Grove thinks is \u201cdead wrong\u201d), or, you can \u201crecycle\u201d her\u2014return her to the position she held (in which she exceeded expectations) before she was promoted. She\u2019ll probably be embarrassed, but if you\u2019re straightforward and supportive she\u2019ll likely get over it quickly. You might promote her again later, once she\u2019s gotten her confidence back and you\u2019ve better assessed her readiness. Here’s more info on what happens once you decide how to promote employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compensation and Performance<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Compensation, like promotions, should be based on performance to reinforce the importance of good performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are three ways to determine base salaries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Experience<\/strong>, which ties compensation only to time. The longer an employee has spent in a position, the more she\u2019s paid. This model is the easiest to implement and to justify to employees, but it implies that performance isn\u2019t important.