Promote me or I quit!
I have a problem, and I need the smart folks who read Slacker Manager to help me.
This year I have already lost 3 people on my team, 1 to a promotion within the company and 2 externally to a different (more technical) position in other firms. Another is leaving at the end of summer, and 2 others that have made it clear they want to get promoted or they will probably leave by year end. If this happens, I’ll have 1 person left that I started the year with.
Why are they leaving? Because we are a flat organization, and we don’t promote from within as much as folks would like. The business unit pressures require us to have senior people in the organization, making it VERY difficult to promote to a different role for junior people. It’s not a question of culture or of fit, but rather of business need.
My 1 senior person, the one who will probably still be around when all is said and done, is concerned organizationally that this is a problem, and wants to know what I, as her manager, can do to force the organization’s hand and find ways to create positions that don’t currently exist, so we can stop the exodus of people.
The past few years have given us amazing growth and amazing profits, and we have been nationally (and locally) recognized as a great place to work for the past 5 years. This (coincidentally) happened right about the time we stopped promoting from within in our department.
My question is this: As a front line manager, how can I help my organization understand it’s in its best interests to spend a little more money to create junior positions even if it makes the business temporarily less efficient?
I’d love any suggestions on how to approach this so I can have a great conversation with my direct report.
Photo credit to alexanderdrachmann
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POSTED IN: coaching, management
12 opinions for Promote me or I quit!
Ryan Purvis
Apr 23, 2008 at 3:51 am
Honestly do the calculation of what work could be handled by a junior person and how much value is therefore lost because a senior person does it.
For example a junior person installs hardware and adds to the domain, installs SharePoint (from documentation) and a senior resource just configures.
Julia Miller
Apr 23, 2008 at 4:01 am
I don’t have answers but have 2 questions that would help figure out the answers.
1. What do the people want the promotions for? More money? More challenging tasks? The illusion of power? Except for the last, you can give them what they need without a position. If they just want power, you don’t want them! :^)
2. Why can’t you grow your people instead of always bringing in from the outside? It seems that you can delegate tasks and coach them so that they could grow to be able to be promoted. There may not be many opportunities - which is another issue - but people like to grow.
Katy
Apr 23, 2008 at 4:53 am
I second Julia’s opinion.
I too work in a flat organisational structure with little or no room for promotion.
Does it bother me? A little. But my company knows this and provides other ways of motivating me such as training and personal development and allowing me to take on various job responsibilities that are normally the remit of other people/departments.
The result? I have varied work and am quite content where I am.
Look to improve *them* not their position in the company
GreatManagement
Apr 23, 2008 at 4:54 am
Q: As a front line manager, how can I help my organization understand it’s in its best interests to spend a little more money?
A: One way to promote individuals is to have grades of roles. Therefore, each junior role has three grades, say level 1, 2 and 3. Level one being the highest. You are ‘promoted’ to level 2 after a certain amount of time / experience and you get a 5% pay rise. That way junior people can earn promotion a couple of times. The differences between the grades can be quite minimal - just a few differences or responsibilities in the job descriptions.
Therefore, for the cost of a small pay rise, you may not have to recruit and train new staff members which, you know, can cost a fortune. In addition, all that knowledge they take with them - priceless!
I am not too sure, why you say, ‘to create junior positions even if it makes the business temporarily less efficient’. Why would it make the business less efficient?
Thanks.
Andrew
Greg
Apr 23, 2008 at 5:39 am
Could you create some “entry level” terminal positions? The concept is to design a position with the expectation that it will be vacated in 18 to 24 months. The new hire gains experience, you gain grunt-level work, with no expectation of a future with your company. Of course if star comes on board, you can keep them. With a system like this, you and the employee are prepared for the turnover.
To follow up with Julia, what do your people really want? Is your pay competitive? Are there non-monetary benefits you can offer?
Scott
Apr 23, 2008 at 8:19 am
First off people quit people before they quit the company!
I would call some of these peope who left and find out WHY they left. They have nothing to lose like a good reference after the exit interview. You need to search deep inside and ask yourself what you or the organizations cold have done better.
Not all people go for the money - sure it’s nice but the effects will last for a short time. What in your office can you change? People like challenges.
People also crave praise but seldom give it. If someone does something good then tell them on the spot and not during their annual review and in front of others - hold them up as an example to others!
tomjedrz
Apr 23, 2008 at 8:54 am
Greetings.
First the obvious … if the organization is flat and vacant senior positions are filled from outside, then there is very little advancement opportunity. Everyone needs to be aware of that, from the point of hire. There is virtually nothing that you can do to change that.
I don’t really understand the stuff about business pressures requiring that you only have senior level people. I would press on that some and get to the real issue. It is far more likely management laziness or cowardice than some amorphous “business unit pressures.”
I think you are missing something in analysis of why people are leaving. The issue is likely not that they want a “promotion”, it is that they want more interesting and challenging work, more responsibility, and the corresponding increase in pay. Every organization has junior level work; senior people doing junior level work get bored and leave. Further, management is usually unwilling to pay senior level money to people doing substantial junior level work. So the company has painted itself into a corner. Senior people are not going to stay in a position where they are doing low level work for low level pay. Would you?
One alternative may be to cultivate a stable of consultants/”hired guns” available to pickup when your staffing is not optimal. This may in fact be the best approach, rather than trying to provide something (a career path) which is not possible in your organization. The senior people can manage the hired guns, which should serve to fill their need for more diverse, challenging work. Then, sometime down the road, you may be able to push the cost savings from having juniors on staff instead of consultants.
If you want internal folks now, you are framing the question improperly. Restructure the work so that instead of x senior positions being required it can be done by y senior and z juniors. When the extra cost and headcount are brought up as (legit) objections, counter with the idea of functional redundancy and reduced risk when people leave. The current dilemma will work in your favor making this argument.
Good luck!
Rob Hooft
Apr 23, 2008 at 11:56 am
In many companies, the only highly paid people are managers. Such companies should consider making more “senior” specialist jobs, increasing pay for highly trained specialists that would provide less value to the company if they were promoted.
Laars Johnsen
Apr 23, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I have twice left companies I liked very much to take positions with other companies who had more compelling growth opportunities than my employer. The bottom line is that if companies want to attract and retain talent, they have to compete in the employment marketplace by offering things the top talent wants: money, growth, quality environment, title (which leads to money). If a company chooses not to compete on these terms, they’re effectively opting themselves out of the A-list, and the fact is that many (if not most) companies simply choose not to compete for the best talent.
Mark Horstman
Apr 23, 2008 at 9:56 pm
You’re asking the wrong question.
This is not the company’s problem, it’s yours. Their structure is their structure. Every structure has an associated set of problems that come with it - you’re at the problem nexus of your org structure right now. The company needn’t spend money simply because that is one thing to do.
Retain them the old fashioned way - by understanding what they want and working to craft a better future for them internally.
MAPping Company Success
Apr 25, 2008 at 2:02 am
[…] also works for companies with flat organizations, such as the one Phil Gerbyshak described over at Slacker Manager, where most people have the same […]
Karl Edwards
Apr 25, 2008 at 5:27 am
People are by nature growing, changing, developing, maturing beings. Any corporate structure that doesn’t take that basic fact into account cannot hope to keep team members engaged for very long.
I’d venture to guess that failure to address this “hard business reality” may be costing your firm more than the flat organizational structure is saving them.
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