Have you ever promoted an employee to a position they were not qualified for?

Today’s challenging labor market can cause us to promote employees who are not qualified.  Even worse, sometimes we promote employees without realizing that “we” may want their promotion more than “they” do, which is why they often do not succeed.  This mistake of promoting employees who are not qualified or who are not willing to put in the work to succeed can cost your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and lost goodwill with your customers.

Today’s message : Promote employees to positions ONLY IF they are qualified.  And if they’re not qualified, TRAIN them so they will succeed.  But NEVER promote them before they’re ready to step up or if they’re not personally motivated to pursue the position.

As stated, in today’s labor market, never before have we had such a shortage of qualified candidates for management and leadership positions.  It’s not like it used to be 20 or 30 years ago, when we used to have 50 to 100 candidates for an Accounting Manager or Finance Director position.  Back then, employees and job seekers were eager and aggressive to “move up the corporate ladder”.  You did not have to “incentivize” them to move up to positions of responsibility or leadership.

No, today we only get a few qualified candidates with the required academic and practical work experience.  This is especially problematic for smaller organizations, or those located far away from metropolitan areas where qualified job candidates reside.

Thus today, human resource management and recruiters have to be creative to find job seekers who can step up to mid-management to upper management positions, especially when in-house candidates are not ambitious to do the work, to train, to take on the key positions you’re seeking to fill.

So ask yourself the question, are you promoting employees to positions “they” are actively pursuing?  Or are “you” pushing them to get excited about the position you need filled in your organization?

Listen to today’s CitySpeak blog and podcast article on this sensitive subject.  It’s not easy talking about this topic, but we must to avoid making the mistake of promoting people to positions they are not qualified to succeed in.

To view the full 30-minute video on this article, go to my YouTube channel under “CitySpeak Podcast” and subscribe to my channel, or click here to watch video

Thank you,

John Herrera, CPA

MuniTemps and the CitySpeak blog/podcast.