Fostering Good Work When the Reward Won't Be a Promotion

Managers are expected to inspire drive and commitment in their employees by encouraging them to advance. But they often stumble badly when they must turn down requests for promotions.

Uncomfortable about saying no, many managers don’t explain why an employee isn’t being chosen. They will insist the staffer is better off in a current job, undermining his or her ambition. Often, they announce an opening when they already have a candidate in mind, stirring distrust about the fairness of the whole process.

Even when they’d like to see an employee advance, they often can’t come up with an appropriate position. This scenario is becoming more prevalent now that economic pressures mean many higher-profile jobs are being left vacant, resulting in pent-up demand among employees for new challenges. “There are a lot of ambitious people, but only so many positions,” says Dan Driscoll, chief operating officer of Viacore, Irvine, Calif., which builds private trading communities that share information. “If managers don’t honestly address this, and also help their people see how they are perceived by peers and superiors and what opportunities lie ahead, it will come back to bite them.”

Employees who feel overlooked or stuck in one position for too long may soon become apathetic or seek a position at a rival company.

Ian Basey, director of marketing at Electronics Marketing, an operating group of Phoenix-based Avnet, a distributor of electronic parts, thinks managers should talk frequently to employees about their strengths and weaknesses not just when they ask for advancement. Doing so would give the employees realistic goals and expectations. The managers, then, won’t be put in the position of having to turn down unexpected requests for a promotion.

“The days when managers told employees what to do and they complied are over,” says Mr. Basey. “But if you have honest, ongoing communications, not just once a year on a performance review, but every few months, people know where they stand.”

These conversations can be touchy. A manager has to talk frankly with employees about their professional skills, ability to get along with others, style of working, and the personal qualities needed to do a particular job. Some jobs require aggressive, highly energetic and independent people while others call for team players who are more consensual and less confrontational.

All jobs get posted on Avnet s Web site, and Mr. Basey doesn’t select a lead candidate until he considers everyone who has applied for the opening. He then sets up as many interviews as possible.

Mr. Basey, who supervises eight employees and has had staffs of more than 50, tries to help employees determine which jobs they are best suited to do. “Some employees think the only way to advance is to have more and more people reporting to them when that isn’t necessarily so,” he says.

At a previous job with another company, he told a staffer who was abrasive to subordinates that he shouldn’t manage people. “It was a difficult conversation because he thought I was demoting him,” says Mr. Basey, who transferred the employee to a job where be was in charge of a project but not supervising anyone.

Six months later, that employee acknowledged he was having more fun and was more successful in the new post, and he eventually was able to advance to a senior job in strategic planning, Mr. Basey notes. Viacore’s Mr. Driscoll, who oversees about 130 employees, says managers should remind employees that they can’t switch jobs every few months, as some did during the dot-com. boom. “The hyper-growth expectations that got set then weren’t typical and don’t exist now,” he says. “Some of the depth and experience you need to acquire in the course of a career comes from being immersed in one job for several years.”

In a tight job market, however, a manager can find tasks that aren’t getting done, and give a staffer a chance to do them and acquire new skills. “A lot of things may be falling through the cracks, which gives employees the chance to grow laterally if not vertically up the ranks,” says Bruce Ellig, a human-resources consultant and retired vice president of Employee Resources at Pfizer, the pharmaceuticals firm.

Managers can encourage all their employees to show some initiative despite limited advancement opportunities by finding ways to reward those who may not be rising stars but who are still strong contributors.

“Every company has high-potential employees as well as high professionals who are valuable contributors and also need recognition,” says Fred Foulkes, a management professor at Boston University’s business school and head of its Human Resources Policy Institute. “You don’t want to turn them off.”

These employees should be included in executive-development programs or company task forces, the professor says, and be assured by their bosses that their efforts are important to their companies’ success.

Source: The Wall Street Journal; April 27, 2003