Merit-based promotions
Merit based promotions take place when a worker is promoted because of greater performance in the current job. Here Merit denotes an individual's knowledge, abilities, skills and efficiency as deliberate from his educational qualifications, training, experience and past employment record. The compensation of this system are quite obvious :
- It motivates workers to work hard, develop their knowledge, attain new skills and contribute to organisational efficiency.
- It helps the workers to focus attention on talented people, identify and reward their meritorious contributions in a suitable way.
- It also motivate other employees to develop their standards of performance through active participation in all of the developmental initiatives undertaken by the worker (, executive development, training etc.)
However, the system can fail to deliver the results, because of following reasons:
- It is not simple to measure merit. Personal prejudices, biases & union pressures can come in the way of promoting the greatest performer.
- When young worker get ahead of other senior workers in an organisation (depends on superior performance), discontentment and frustration may spread among the ranks. They can feel insecure and may even leave the organisation.
- Also, past performance might not guarantee future success of a worker.
Good performance in one job (as a Foreman, for instance) is no guarantee of good performance in another job (as a supervisor).