INTRODUCTION:

Promotion is the advancement of an employee's rank or position in an organizational hierarchy

system. Promotion may be an employee's reward for good performance i.e. positive appraisal.
Promotion is an important aspect in staffing function of Human Resource management.
Before a company promotes an employee to a particular position it ensures that the person is able
to handle the added responsibilities by screening the employee with interviews and tests and
giving them training or on-the-job experience.

DEFINITION:
Promotion is defined as an advancement of an employee to a better job in terms of higher
responsibility, more prestige, greater skill and increased rate of pay.
It is assigning the higher level job to an empoyee from within and this upward movement is
called as promotion.
Thus,the main conditions of promotion are:
 Reassignment of higher level job.
 Delegation with greater responsibility and authority.
 Higher pay.

PRINCIPLES OF PROMOTION:
1. It should be consistent and should be applied uniformly to all employees.
2. It should be fair and impartial.
3. Systematic line of promotion channel should be incorporated.
4. It should ensure open policy in the sense that every eligible employee should be
considered for promotion.
5. It should contain career cut norms and criteria for judging merit, length of service,
potentiality etc.
6. Favouritism should not be taken as basis of promotion.
7. It should contain reinforcing the future chances in the mind of rejected candidates.

PURPOSES OF PROMOTION:
Organizations promote the employees with a view to achieve the following purposes:
 To utilize the employee's skill, knowledge, at the appropriate level resulting in
organizational effectiveness and employee satisfaction.
 To develop the competitive spirit and inculcate the zeal to acquire higher skill,knowledge
required by higher level of jobs.
 To develop a competent internal source, ready to take up jobs at higher levels in the
changing environment.
 To promote employee's self-development by reducing labour turnover.
 To promote a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of belongingness towards the company.
 To build loyalty and to boost morale.
 To reward loyal employees.
 To get rid of problems created by the leaders of the work union by promoting them to an
officer's level,where they are not effective in creating a problem.

TYPES:
There are three types of promotion:
 Vertical promotion
 Upgradation
 Dry promotion

 Vertical promotion:

Under this type, employee is moved to the next higher level accompanied by greater
responsibility, authority, pay and status.

 Up-gradation:

The job is upgraded in the organizational hierarchy. Consequently, the employee gets
more salary, higher authority and responsibility.

 Dry promotion:

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

BASIS OF PROMOTION:
There are two well – established basis of promotion.These are:
1. Merit as basis of promotion
2. Seniority as basis of promotion
 1) Merit as basis of promotion:

Merit denotes skill, knowledge, ability, efficiency and aptitude as different from
education, training and past employment record.

The advantages of merit rating system of promotion are:

 Better utilization of resources at higher level.
 Competent employees are motivated to do their best and contribute to the organizational
efficiency.
 Works as a golden handcuff regarding employee turnover.
 Encourage the employees to acquire the new skills, knowledge for all round
development.

The disadvantages of merit based promotion are:

 Measurement of merit is highly difficult.
 Many people distrust the management integrity in judging merit.
 The techniques of merit measurement are subjective.
 Merit denotes the past achievement, but does not indicate future success. Hence, the
purpose of promotion may not be served if merit is taken as sole criterion.

2) Seniority as a basis of Promotion:

Seniority refers to the relative length of service in the same job and in the same
organization. The logic is, there is a positive corelation between the service, knowledge
and the skills acquired by the employee. It is based on the custom that the first in should
be given first chance in all previleges.
Advantages of seniority based promotion:
 It is relatively easy to measure the service and judge the seniority.
 There would be full support from all , as there is no scope for favouritism,discrimination
and judgement.
 It creates a sense of certainty of getting promotion to every emplyee as when his turns
comes.
 Seniority employees derive a sense of satisfaction as these employees are respected and
their efficiency cannot be disputed.
 It minimizes the scope for grievances and conflicts.
Disadvantages of seniority based promotion :
 It assumes that the employees learn more relatively with the length of service. As a
matter of fact, employees learn up to a certain age and learning ability diminishes over a
period of time.
 It demotivates the young and more competent employees, which may result in higher
turnover of young employees.
 It kills the interest to develop as everybody will be promoted with or without
improvement.
 Effectiveness of organization is likely to be diminished.
 Judging the seniority can also difficult in practice as problems like job seniority,
company seniority, regional seniority, experience as a trainee ,earlier experience pose
different considerations.

Both the basis are having their advantages and disadvanttages. Hence,the combination of
both of them can be considered as an effective basis for promotion.
Seniority- cum -Merit :
While management prefer merit as basis of promotion, trade union prefer seniority as the sole
basis of promotion with a view to satisfy majority of employees. A balance between seniority
and merit can be considered. There are several ways in striking the balance between the two:
 Minimum length of service and merit.
 Measurements of seniority and merit through a common factor.
 Minimum merit and seniority.

BENEFITS OF PROMOTION:
1. Promotion places the employees in a position where an employee’s skills and knowledge
can be better utilized.
2. It creates and increases the interest of other employees in the company, as they believe
that they will also get their turn.
3. It creates a feeling of content with the existing conditions of work and employment
among employees.
4. It increases the interest in acquiring higher qualifications, in training and in self-
development with a view to meet the requirements of promotion
5. Promotion improves employee morale and job satisfaction.
6. Ultimately, it improves organizational health.

PROBLEMS WITH PROMOTION:

 1. It creates problems like disappointment of those who did not get promotion, refusal of
promotion etc.
2. Employees may develop a negative attitude and tend to reduce their contribution.
3. Some employees refuse promotion. These incidents include promotion with transfer
to other areas like unwanted place, apprehension of incompetence, delegation of
unwanted responsibilities or anxiety that promotion may cause damage to their
position.
4. At times, the superiors may not like to relieve their subordinates due to their
favouritism or indispensability.
5. There could be inequality in promotional opportunities.

Bibliography:
 Naronha P.A.” Human Resource Management Symbosis” Centre for Distance
Learning;1st edition;Pp-83-88
 Basvanthappa BT.”Management of Nursing Services & Education”Jaypee
Publishers;1st edition;Pp-110-112
 www.google.com