First would be the "annual review," a procedure through which management scrutinizes the payroll once a year and reevaluates salaries, usually upping them. Theoretically, you are thus assured that your salary will be examined at annual intervals and your contributions to company efficiency will then be recognized and rewarded.
Actually the procedure is a handy way of avoiding the consideration of raises during the other months of the year, a special hardship on men of ability who progress faster and contribute more than their associates. It is also hard on the new employee hired just after the annual review and whose talents might have to wait another twenty months for recognition. And while management tries to establish the fact that raises are for those who earned them, they are usually so widely distributed to keep everyone happy that little or no difference is drawn between the bench warmers and the hard players. The unhappy result-the incentive to achieve excellence is lowered, and the hard players soon learn to "join the team" on the bench.
Then there is the time-honored practice of "Management by Exception," advocated by most of the standard books on business management. The business graph on the wall, made famous by cartoonists, is a part of it. The graph is supposed to indicate the course of sales or production, usually hopefully upward, and any deviation from the chart up or down-any exception-is thereby instantly revealed, and instantly acted upon. In the same way, records are kept of what each employee is expected to produce, and the alert supervisor is supposed to detect immediately any exception to the norm.
Theoretically, the supervisor should be as happy to detect a superior performance as a sales manager would be to detect signs of a boom, but it does not work out that way in the majority of instances. Most supervisors think of themselves as "fire fighters" or "trouble shooters," and in that frame of mind they are alert to detect any signs of inefficiency that threaten to give their department a bad name. The lazy or inefficient worker is soon dealt with. The average worker who does what is expected of him is considered to be "no problem" by the supervisor. The gifted, or "exceptional" man should be, according to the rules, as much of a problem as the below-par man. He should be recommended for promotion, and another man brought in to take his place, all of which involves a lot of paper work and training that the supervisor would rather not face.
Far better, in his opinion, to have a superior man around to help out in emergencies than to promote him and face breaking in another man who might be of no value whatever. Thus while "Management by Exception" does serve to weed out the incompetents, it usually continues to breed mediocrity by failing to give recognition to merit.
Another hurdle in the path of personal progress is the established belief in many companies that the cost of promoting a man and "breaking him in on the new job" exceeds his worth for months/or even years. At one time it was believed that a graduate engineer had to spend two years in the field before he earned back his first year's salary. I know it is often the case that management spends thousands of dollars over and beyond a man's salary in breaking him in on a new job, but I consider this extravagance a case of pure shortsightedness on the part of management.
Either it failed to prepare a man properly for his new responsibilities, or it did not know how to select the right man for the job. In either case, management deserves to pay extra for its deficiencies. But while I can't feel sorry for management under such circumstances, I do regret that it has made management, on the whole, hesitant about handing out raises and promotions as rapidly as it should for its own good.
What these practices all add up to is a serious case of management inertia. It believes that if it gives a raise to one, it must give corresponding raises to others, and it is cheaper to let one man suffer than raise the whole crew. It believes that if a superior man is doing a good job, he is usually no problem and so can be left where he is. It believes that promoting a man entails all sorts of training expenses and uncertainties, not to mention the paper work, so why take the risk that he will flop? Laboring under this negative attitude, it is loathe moving at all.
