Inverse Promotions
The concept of promotions is quite mundane. Employees are always in an effort to outdo each other in order to get promoted first on the basis of their performance levels. However, at a certain point in time, they reach a level of incompetence i.e. they are no more able to do the work as per the requirements of that position. Their struggle for survival not only makes them desperately unhappy, but also proves costly to the company in terms of lost productivity and lowered morale.
The acceptability of lateral transfers is increasing with employees being encouraged to move from one department to a similar position in another. This increases the knowledge base of an employee and makes her more valuable. This also gives her an opportunity to explore different areas within the company and decide what she is best at. Lateral transfers also benefit the company by increasing the retention of valued employees which, in turn, leads to reduction in costs associated with a new hire.
Demotion, or in other words downward movement, is less often used as it has a negative connotation. Many people vie for promotions mainly for ‘prestige’. Some are smart enough to decline a promotion because they realize that they do not yet fit into the higher position despite having the necessary qualifications. However, peer pressure and questions from coworkers raising doubts over their competence levels are difficult to bear with.
When an individual is successful in her work, she gets qualified by default for promotion to a higher position. Many a times, she fails to meet the requirements of the new job. Slowly, negative performance feedback and offers for additional training come into picture which decrease the confidence levels and simultaneously increase the amount of job dissatisfaction. This is when the need for demotion arises. An employee should be sent back to the position where she was effective. However, companies are reluctant to do so because most managers believe that doing so would bruise an employee’s ego which will result in her quitting the job. Hence, the major challenge of the management is to make this concept acceptable to the employees.
The ego issues can be resolved through one on one discussion with the employee and making her understand how valuable she could prove to the organization once back to her previous position. Transferring the employee to a different unit shall be preferable. Most importantly, an employee should be given ample time to think about the change. The monetary issues can be resolved by hiking an employee’s pay and lowering the gap between the current pay and that of the higher position. This might seem like additional expenditure for the company. Nevertheless, it proves to be lower than the cost of finding, hiring and training a new individual.
It is easier to implement Inverse Promotions in a large organization as it is simpler to find a suitable position due to the existence of various divisions at the level to which the employee is being inversely promoted.
An Inverse Promotion has its own advantages. It helps in increasing the productivity of the entire workforce and eliminating high levels of incompetence from the work structure. Despite all the benefits, it seems less likely that this concept would become highly acceptable in the near future. However, the company should ensure that it does not bear heavy losses due to incompetence of employees at their newly occupied positions. This can be done through Performance Management. An organization must assess the time required to coach a newly promoted employee to achieve appropriate performance level. An agreement must be signed with the employee before promotion which would enable the organization to demote her in case the goals are not met.
The writer, Siddharth Chhottray, is currently pursuing PGDM at T A Pai Management Institute / TAPMI (2010-2012) and is an alumnus of BITS, Pilani (Goa- Class of 2009)
Email : siddharth.12@tapmi.edu.in
Samir 
ramalingam 
Farhaan 
siddharth 
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