By Lisa Kaplan Gordon
You have a stellar employee who’s reliable, always on time or early, and finishes their work effortlessly. Is this worker ready for a promotion?
Promotions are tools to reward, inspire, and retain employees in a tight job market.
“If you are not providing an environment that is fun and challenging, you’re going to lose your staff to someone else,” says Gene Russell, president and CEO of Manex Consulting, a nonprofit, manufacturing consulting firm in California’s Bay Area and Sacramento.
It’s important for nonprofit leadership to know the signs that a worker is ready to move up. Here are our top 6 signals that an employee is promotion-ready.
1. Evaluations are consistently stellar
An employee with several, consistently positive evaluations under their belt may be ready for new challenges.
Russell uses a point-based evaluation system for Manex employees that provides an objective signal that an employee is ready to advance.
“The total tells us whether someone is outstanding, exceeds expectations, or meets expectations,” he says. “It’s a way that forces you to move away from fluffy evaluations.”
2. Employee is asking for a greater challenge
Is your employee always asking for more work? Volunteering to be added to a new team? Coming up with ways to make his job more productive? Then, they’re actually asking for a promotion, even though they might not say the words.
Boredom saps energy, and the last thing you want is for a stellar employee to feel unchallenged. Even if you don’t have an immediate way to promote this employee, give him more challenging assignments or work that will prepare them for the next step up.
3. Employee is the go-to worker in the office
You know the one, the employee you turn to in a must-get-it-done emergency, and whom other workers ask for help and advice. In a sense, this employee already is acting as a supervisor and showing you they can handle a managerial role. Reward them with a promotion.
4. Employee over-delivers
If you ask them to interview one subject for a report, they interview three. They exceed every quota and always do more than expected. This is a worker who wants to be noticed and appreciated. And nothing shows appreciation more than a promotion with a pay bump.
5. Employee owns their mistakes
Everybody makes mistakes. But your promotion-ready worker owns his mistakes, investigates his part in a failed project, and puts strategies in place to ensure success the next time. Not only do you respect this worker, but others can depend on them not to spread the blame when things go wrong.
6. Employee is appreciated by everyone
You think this great employee is ready for promotion, and you’re not alone. People above and below this employee respect and value them.
“You get an echo chamber where people are thinking like you’re thinking, that this person is special and ready for an increase in responsibility,” Russell says.
