AICPA Audit Clarity Standards are Coming: Planning for Possible Changes in Your Audit Engagement

Promotions are the cornerstone of professional growth – they motivate employees by appealing to their sense of ambition. While there are many things organizations can do to improve employee morale, if you don’t have a solid process in place for promoting your staff, you’ll never see their best efforts.

Over the past year, 400,000+ workers were surveyed in the U.S. and the results revealed that when workers believe that promotions are managed effectively, they are two times as likely to work harder and put forth the extra effort required to advance in the workplace.  In addition, these same workers said they are also more likely to stay put long-term.

For employers, having a clear promotion policy in place is one of the most powerful ways they can drive their company’s success. The payoff is priceless – employee turnover rates are lower, productivity and morale increases and businesses see revenue growth.

Promotions are extremely personal and should benefit both the employee and the employer – no matter how large or small the company is. Leaders should not focus only on an employees’ qualifications but should also take the time to understand their current role, their interests and career aspirations as well as their weaknesses. You then put yourself in a position to be their top supporter and can advocate on their behalf when an internal opportunity arises. By refocusing your energy on the people the process is meant to support, you can improve the effectiveness of the promotion process itself. Taking ownership of the process and encouraging your staff members to step forward when there is an opportunity, creates a trust between the two of you and ultimately the process.

You want to refrain from promoting your buddy or the guy whose ethics are questionable or promote on the basis of seniority. You’ll only leave the rest of your staff feeling like the truly important things don’t matter like productivity or integrity. They’ll start believing that they need to focus more on developing personal relationships or become lazy thinking they just need to put in the time to gain seniority. Even worse, they’ll think that it doesn’t matter how the work gets done just as long as it gets done making the quality of work less of a priority.

A solid promotions process allows leaders to elevate each employee to their full potential – while showing the company what type of results and behaviors are valued. Promotions are about people so when leaders take a caring approach to coach and advocate for their employees, everyone reaps the benefits.