Career Advancement Rather than Promotion
In most companies, promotion systems are administered by the personnel department. The first step toward a stronger system would be to modify or enlarge the definition of promotion to include the concept of career advancement.
In the typical promotion system, when an opening occurs the manager of the job writes up a set of qualifications for the personnel department, which then begins the screening process. Usually, the first candidate sort is by salary. The computer (or whatever system is used) presents a list of names of people whose salaries fall about 20 percent below the range of the open job. The next sort is for people within this list who have held their present jobs about two years. Finally, man specifications are considered.
But the arbitrary salary and tenure screenings have no doubt already eliminated some eligible candidates whose careers would he advanced by this position, even though their salaries would not benefit. Very bright, capable younger people are similarly denied consideration, not because they lack qualification, but because they are young, their salaries are too low, or they haven't been in their positions long enough.
Real progress can be made by minimizing the effect of the two arbitrary data-sorting steps and instituting practices that pinpoint individuals who, together with the firm, might benefit from the experience of this open position. Three such procedures might be called standing permission for job seeking, future job targeting, and fifth-anniversary personnel scanning.
Standing Permission for Job Seeking
This means that every employee is given the privilege of visiting the personnel staff (or some other designated administrator) to discuss his career interests or to explore available opportunities without his immediate manager's permission. As soon as he indicates that he wishes to be considered a serious candidate for a position, he informs his manager so that the prospective and present supervisors can discuss his qualifications. If the employee avails himself of this standing permission, he assumes the responsibility for ensuring that his assigned work does not suffer during the process. If he is offered the new position, the timing of the transfer must of course be negotiated between the two managers.
Future Job Targeting
Under this procedure, the personnel specialist considers where the open job might lead if the incumbent were successful. Usually, there will be several future possibilities. Once he has determined them, he identifies people who have expressed an interest in these or similar jobs and adds their names to the candidate list, regardless of their present salary. Suppose a job as program manager starting at $15,000 opens in a defense company. In the past, successful completion of a stint as program manager has led to project manager or administrative manager responsibility. An astute specialist pulls the names and personnel files of all employees who have expressed an interest in either of these two jobs. He lets them know they are being considered for program manager, though it may be a horizontal move or even a demotion in some cases and a very big increase in others. Then he lets them decide whether or not they'd like to compete for the job.
Fifth-Anniversary Personnel Scanning
This practice has the personnel specialist add to the candidate pool the names of all employees who have held their current jobs for five years or more, who have remained in approximately the same salary grade, and arc now doing (or have in the past done) work related to the open job. He discusses with them the problem of getting stale in one's work and the need for new ventures to keep alert and on the move. He asks whether they wish to be considered for the opening as part of their plan to avoid obsolescence.
These procedures can eloquently express an organization's interest in an employee and effectively support whatever career plans he has for himself.
Breaking Set Patterns in Job Families
The second traditional screening practice is to scrutinize people currently in positions that are purported to prepare them for an opening. This step relies on the job-family concept, based largely on precedent. As employees advance within a company, certain job routes are traveled more frequently than others. These are labeled job families. Another use of the job-family concept is to study the qualifications for all positions, searching for common requirements clustered in certain areas of knowledge and skill that increase by degree or amount. At worst, this perpetuates the sins of the past and can lead up an increasingly specialized job chain.
A worthwhile method for developing job families creatively is to put all the jobs of a given organization on the table at a managerial training session and ask participants to find ways of building new families according to whatever criteria seem sensible to them, considering the requirements of top jobs in the organization. In most cases, a meandering or zigzag path with shorter tenure per job would be more satisfying and motivating to the employee and more rewarding to the firm than the present vertical routes. In any event, asking managers to find a number of different job families helps them break set so that they are more willing to consider people who present themselves as candidates from positions that are not traditional antecedents to the opening. It also helps the personnel office to step out of its ruts and view jobs from different perspectives.
This is not to imply that a fast in and out is desirable for all men in all positions but rather that in the early stages of a career, say, the first 12 to 15 years, wider exposure will pay handsome dividends in developing people, in enlarging the number of ultimate career choices open to them, and in giving a firm a larger pool of qualified candidates for top positions. This kind of diversity during the early career period will minimize penalties to all parties concerned. In later career stages, both the risk and the penalty for too rapid movement are high. Customers want senior management continuity, and top managers need time to live with and sometimes correct the unfortunate results of major decisions they have made.
