IES Blog

Communicate employee promotion policies to boost motivation and retention

Posted on December 28th, 2012 Read time: 1 minutes

Sharing and explaining company policies and procedures related to employee promotion can play a large role in keeping staff motivated, focused and committed to their company, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) states.

However, only 16 percent of companies widely communicate their promotional policies for recruitment and employee retention, according to a recent survey by WorldatWork.

"Promotional Guidelines" found while 72 percent of companies in 2012 either provide a copy of their policies or explain them to employees when they are involved in a promotions, only 13 percent of companies share them with workers only when requested and use them primarily to guide HR administration and management.

"Organizations consistently undercommunicate promotional guidelines and policies to the general employee population," Kerry Chou, a practice leader at WorldatWork, said in a media release, according to SHRM. "Employers may be missing out on an opportunity to enhance its ability to attract, motivate and retain employees by not sharing general information about the guidelines or processes associated with promotions."

Among the 873 respondents, WorldatWork found the top two defining criteria of a promotion are an increase in pay, band, grade or level and a higher level of responsibilities. Only about one-third of companies require assigning promoted employees a new title.

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