Promotion and conflict 2

In my last post, I introduced the topic of promotion and conflict. That is the conflict resulting from promotion of one of the colleagues at work. At the end of that post, I left a question about how companies should address this problem. In order to reduce the intensity of the conflict, companies should adopt the following measures.

     Firstly, organizations should state clearly their criteria for promotion and make them available to all their employees. This simple act will show the employees that promotion policy is purely based on merit and not on favoritism. It is understandable that organizations reach a limit where they cannot carry out promotion unless aged employees retire. Even in this situation, they should make it clear to all their employees that promotion is frozen so nobody will be expecting to be promoted. This opens door for those who want to leave the organization. Transparency and open communication always reduces tension among people in any situation.

     The second measure organizations should take to minimize the problem is to give proper training and coaching to the newly promoted managers. This will help them understand their roles appropriately and give them tools to be used in dealing with their subordinates. This is very important because young employees are sometimes promoted to higher positions in innovative organizations like the hightech ones. These younger managers generally come from technical background without any management or administration training. Their roles had always been related to solving technical problems and no experience in interpersonal relationship. Therefore, these must be trained to acquire this ability if their organizations want them to perform well.

     In the next posts, we will look at other measures that can taken. So, watch out!