BASES OF PROMOTION

There are two well-established bases of employee promotion namely,

• Seniority,
• Merit.

1.MERIT.:

• Merit refers to knowledge, skill, talent, competence, and capability as

different from education, training, and past service record.
• Merit is not considered in promotions.
• Merit means ability to work.
• If merit is adopted as the basis of promotion, the most able person in the lower
grade, no matter he is junior most in the company, shall be promoted.
• It encourages all employees to improve their efficiency.
• Management personnels generally prefer merit as the basis of promotion.
• Merit ma be determined by job performance and b analysis of employee potential
for development through written or oral examinations or personal interviews or
their records of performance. Thus 'ability' ignores the value of experience.

Advantages

• Merit system makes better deployment of resources at the high level.

• Merit works as golden handcuff concerning employee turnover.
• Capable employees are motivated to do their best and add to the organizational
effectiveness.
• Merit system encourages the employees to obtain new knowledge/skill for all
round development.

Disadvantages

• A lot of people have doubts about the management integrity in evaluating merit.
• Measurement of merit is extremely complicated.
• The methods of merit measurement are prejudiced.
• Merit refers to the past accomplishment, however does not signifies potential
achievement. For this reason, the intention of promotion might not be served if
merit is taken as the one and only decisive factor.

2.SENIORITY:

• Seniority denotes to relative duration of service in the same post and in the same
company.
• The reason is, there is a positive connection between service, talent and the
knowledge obtained by the employees.
 • It is based on the convention that the first should be given the first opportunity in
all rights.
• Seniority means length of recognised service in an organization. Merit means ability
to work.
• Trade unions generally emphasise on seniority as the basis of promotion. Seniority
means length of recognised service in an organization.
• If seniority is adopted as the basis of promotion, the senior most person in the lower
grade shall be promoted as and when there is an opening in the higher position.

Advantages

• It is comparatively simple to measure the service and review the seniority.

• There would be full support from each and every one as there is no scope for
nepotism, prejudice, and judgment.
• It builds a sense of certainty of getting promotion to every employee.
• Senior employees get a sense of contentment, since these employees are esteemed
and their effectiveness cannot be disputed.
• It diminishes the possibility for complaints and disagreements.

Disadvantages

• It presumes that the employees learn more fairly with the length of service.
• In point of fact, employees learn up to certain age and learning skill is retreating
over a phase of time.
• It kills the inquisitiveness to build up, since everyone will be promoted with or
with no development.
• It demotivates the young and more capable employees, which might give rise to
higher turnover of young employees.
• Judging the seniority can as well be complicated in carrying out as tribulations
like job seniority, company seniority, earlier experience, etc, pose diverse
considerations. Efficiency of organization is expected to be reduced.

Over and above the two formal bases of promotion-seniority and merit, their may be several
other informal bases such as

• general aptitude to work

• Loyalty to orgnaisation
• quality and quantity of the work performed

but seniority and merit and regarded as the formal bases of promotion.