Handling promotions is one of the many things managers deal with in their line of work. Though it’s not something that comes up incredibly frequently, generally occurring annually or semi-annually, it’s still an important task. Promotions are useful for rewarding and incentivizing top performers, developing employees’ skills to position them at the most useful position within the organization, and keeping valuable workers within your organization instead of looking for more opportunities elsewhere. Managing the logistics of promotions can add some extra hassle into the managers’ work, as they must determine things like eligibility, budget allocation, and so on. Though it can be frustrating at times, it doesn’t need to be. Let’s talk for a minute about how promotions factor into a compensation management solution.
Depending on their organization, a manager will usually log into the system to administer promotions at certain times in the year – generally at the end or in the middle. Some organizations, however, allow promotions year-round. The specifics of when promotions are handled will be something that’s specified within the system based off of the organization’s practices. Most SaaS solutions will be made specifically to act within the guidelines set by customers so that it fits the standards of the organization using it.
Before actually administering promotions, however, managers first need to determine which of their direct reports are eligible for advancement. Based off of how their organization tracks employee performance, this might entail cross-checking a performance management system in order to determine who’s met the requisite criteria for a promotion. Then the managers have to actually go through and administer promotions with the budget allotted to them.
This process – cross-checking employee performance and re-calculating budgets – may not seem too terribly complicated. However, as the number of employees to account for goes up, so too does the amount of time it takes to complete this task. Furthermore, managers don’t want to waste any time on something they do so infrequently. A compensation management solution streamlines the entire process, allowing managers to quickly and easily administer promotions. Once they log on to the compensation software, the system will automatically go through and check each employee’s eligibility. This takes the onus of checking eligibility off of the manager, saving them time. The system can also have a budget set aside specifically for promotions, with guidelines set in place so that they don’t go over-budget. This budget updates in real-time as the managers go through and administer the promotions.
Once that’s done, the system will send the data up the approval chain automatically, further automating and simplifying the process. All of this together means that all a manager has to do is get in, complete the necessary tasks, and get out. They can then get back to the business at hand, and won’t have to worry about promotions until the next time they need to mete them out. Making promotions quick and simple is just one of the ways in which a compensation management system can save businesses time and hassle.