There are perils to not promoting an internal candidate for an open position. One peril is that passed-over employees will feel demoralized. Another is that you may end up with a person who is not the most qualified for the job. After all, could a person coming from another organization, and possibly a different industry altogether, ever be a better choice than a person with years of experience working in the department the new position will manage? On the other hand, it’s not all necessarily rosy when you promote from within.
A post from early March on Indeed explores the pros and cons of internal promotions.
Pros
It is noted in the Indeed post that hiring time is reduced. Not only do your executives already know all about this person, but it’s easy logistically to meet with them for interviews. All you may have to do is walk down the hall or call over the workstation divider.
You also don’t have to worry about onboarding the employee into the company overall. The company is old hat to them; the position is all that’s new, and in some cases, they may have already been doing the position’s work, but not until the promotion had they been given credit for it.
The team is also already familiar to them. No need to worry if they will mesh with their co-workers or if it will take them a long time to figure out everyone’s personality and preferred work style.
The training time saved equals money saved, making the internal hire a more cost-efficient option, too.
In addition to all those benefits, the promotion sends the message to other employees that if they work hard, the company ultimately will reward them by furthering their career.
Having a manager who has been in the trenches doing the hands-on work also can help balance the team’s workload. They know when to say, “No,” to requests from executives. They know what the team can and cannot handle without allocating additional resources, such as another member to the team or at least a freelancer.
Similarly, they know the technology resources of the group they will be managing, including the shortcomings of that technology in getting high-quality work done.
Cons
Just as the internal promotion can send a message that if you work hard in the organization, you will be rewarded with career advancement, an opposite message can be sent to all other internal candidates who lost out on the job.
Jealousy and resentment of the newly promoted former colleague is not unusual. Executives making the promotion decision must be sure this is truly the most qualified person, including whether logistically this is the right person. Are they in-person at the office location where their part of the company is based? How many years of their career are left before a likely retirement looms? Are you promoting a person with indications that they are likely to want to end their career in the next 5 to 10 years, while there are options for promotion that may have 20-plus years left of their career?
Is the newly promoted employee going to be directed, and given explicit instructions from executives, to transition out of their current role so they can focus on the overall department instead of continuing to be tied to the work projects associated with their old role? This is a key question to ask because there are dangers to a promoted internal employee who does not fully step away from the projects they were working on in the role they are leaving.
It’s only human to want to devote the bulk of your department’s resources to your own “work babies.” It’s only human, but it can be avoided with the right oversight from executives. Transitioning the employee fully out of their former role as soon as possible, rather than having them continue to remain as the face of that former role/work project helps enormously. If their name and face are still tied to former projects, how can they be an even dealer in allocating department resources?
There also is the danger of the newly promoted internal employee giving special privileges to certain team members, such as allowing a favorite employee to work fully remote from home while others within the same proximity to the office are expected to commute. “Well, it’s what I had to do in order to keep her,” the newly promoted employee might argue in response to accusations of alleged favoritism.
A savvy executive would respond: “Right, but what do you have to do to keep the rest of the valued employees in the department?”
There are many advantages to internal promotion—provided the promoted employee understands they must fully transition out of their former role and develop the same bonded feeling with all the business units and people in the department they now manage.
How do you train managers to make decisions on internal vs. external promotions? And once the promotion has been decided on, how do you help transition the newly promoted employee into their new role?