Does Your Employer Have Clear Policies on Promotion, Transfers, and Rehiring?

Why Employees Apply for Promotions and Transfers

There are numerous reasons that employees apply for promotions and transfers, not all of which are directly related to career advancement. While improving a career is the most common motivation, other factors often exert equally strong attractions. Here are some of the additional common reasons to seek new opportunities at a current employer.

• Try something new and interesting: Some employees feel the need for new challenges and motivators. Moving up or laterally on the organization chart may offer that new, interesting career situation without changing employers.
• Tired of current tasks, duties, and responsibilities : Many employees are simply bored with their current job tasks. An intra-department or intra-company promotion, or just a different job can re-energize an employee’s enthusiasm.
• Perceive few growth opportunities in current department: Whether real or imagined, should you believe there will be limited chances to improve your skills, value, or career position, the motivation to transfer jobs and departments could become strong.
• Unhappiness with a supervisor: This motivator is more common than either employees or management cares to admit. An employee and supervisor who are not on the same page can create troubling issues. Should these issues, private or public, magnify, many employees either seek relief via a transfer or look for another employer.

Even if you have not yet experienced any of these other motivators, the odds favor that you will at some point in your career. If or when this condition occurs, you will fully understand the importance of working for an employer that clearly states their policies for promotion, transfer, or rehire.

Written Policies Necessary

The Human Resource (HR) department should always write and publish the internal promotion, transfer, and rehire policies of a company. Neglecting this task can create potentially disastrous misunderstandings, conflicts, talent losses, and overall staff problems that can have long-term negative ramifications. Consider just a couple of simple examples.

Your employer internally advertises an open position. You apply for the job. You are told the “unwritten” policy states that you must work for the company for at least 18 months to qualify for such a promotion. After your employer hires an outside candidate, you learn that the new person had only six months’ experience with a different company. How happy are you with your current employer?

You like your job and company, but receive a fabulous offer, doubling your salary, from a young, innovative company. This is an offer you simply cannot refuse. Unfortunately, six months later, ownership sells the firm to a foreign buyer, who decides to move all operations to their home country. You contact your former employer, whom you left on the best terms, to ask to be rehired. You are then told that the company’s “unwritten” policy is to prohibit rehires under any circumstances. It now seems extremely unfair that this information was previously undisclosed.

Publishing company policies regarding promotions, transfers, and rehires is important. It matters little whether you agree or disagree with these policies. The critical factor is that you know what they are. Knowing allows you to plan and manage your career, with your current and future employers, properly.

Advantages to You and Your Company to Have Clear Policies

Employers with clear, written, and published promotion policies attract better employees and suffer lower turnover. Employees working for these companies eliminate potential unhappy surprises, understand the factors that allow or prohibit intra-company job movement, and learn issues to consider when seeking new employment.

• Publishing clearly-stated job postings minimizes confusion: You’ll have a good idea if you qualify for a posted position. This eliminates the automatic rejection that can occur when the position is not clearly defined.
• The best candidates for positions are often current employees: Your accumulated knowledge of your company’s operations and needs offers advantages an outside candidate could never enjoy.
• Advising staff of open positions gives employees confidence that the employer considers them valuable assets and wants to promote from within when possible: Employers who habitually hire from the outside suffer more turnover as current employees become discouraged at the lack of internal promotion opportunities. If given first opportunity to apply, employees feel they have a fair and equitable chance to achieve the promotion or transfer they want.
• Minimizes potential employee or management embarrassment when staff applications don’t qualify for promotion or transfer: Few employees or managers relish being advised or having to advise others they were not selected for a promotion or transfer. Published policies eliminate many unqualified applications, saving both manager and employee from bad news.

The key is to encourage or work for an employer that understands the importance of written, published promotion, transfer, and rehire policies. If you’re unsure, ask your HR department about company policies. Should you receive blank stares, you might consider contacting Kelly Services or plan to conduct a serious job search on your own.