Interviews

(i) Advancement is defined as personnel administrative promotion. It is device which affects

the efficiency of work in administration (Tyagi 1975 P.402);

(ii) It is a personnel administrative device, which pertains “to advance in pay by a prescribed

increment within the scale of pay appropriate to a given position.

In other words, advancement specifically concern increase in pay associated with increase in step accumulated by yearly increment. This is derived from a compensation plan build on graded scale of salary by which a new employee is appointed on a minimum salary fixed for his job and as he progresses in service and accumulate more experience on the job his salary will increase up the scale of his salary. It is this increment in compensation that is technically called advancement or administrative promotion.

3.3.1. Types of advancement

Advancement is usually based on two different factors which are:

(i) Length of service in the position (ii) Efficiency of the employees

This implies that an employee may enjoy advancement based on how long he has stayed in the service or based on how efficient he has been in a position.

In some organisations however, advancement of employees are determined by a mix consideration of length of service and the degree of efficiency of employees. These three basis

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of advancement provide us the three category of typology of advancements, which are:

(i) Automatic advancement system (ii) Semi-automatic advancement system (iii) The conditional advancement system.

3.3.1.1 Automatic Advancement System

Under this system the sole criterion of advancement is length of service and once an employee fulfils it, he/she get pay increment automatically on annual basis.

3.3.1.2 Semi-Automatic Advancement

This system gives equal considerations to the length of service and efficiency of the employee as the criteria for advancement. Here, increment will be made on employee pay only if the head of the department or unit certifies that employee performance is adequate and has met the length of service condition. If his performance is not satisfactory, the increment may be withdrawn for that year until the employee improves performance to a satisfactory level.

3.3.1.3 The Conditional Advancement System

Here, employee efficiency is the sole criterion for advancement. The problem with this system is that it is open to abuses by the head of the department who may use it to victimize employees working under them. It is thus open to corruption, favouritism and subjective judgment of the head. To safeguard against the mishandling of the system, organisations should establish standard for rating measuring employee efficiency and the head should be responsive and in the interest of the organisation be objective in assessing the employee efforts at work.

123 3.4 Definition and Reasons for Employee Demotion

Beach (1980 P. 349) defines demotion as the assignment of an employee to a job of lower status and pay. Usually the level of difficulty and responsibility is lower on the new job.

3.4.1 Causes of Demotion

Employee demotion may be caused by the following reasons:

(i) Employee may suffer demotion due to business recessions and corporate re-organisation

resulting from business crisis and consequent retrenchment of some employees may compel those personnel lucky to be retained in the organisation to accept lower-level positions. Re- organisations due to dampen business activities or other political reforms in public service may cause departments to be combined and some jobs eliminated and the consequence is usually large scale layoff which may set in bumping up process;

(ii) Incompetence or inadequate performance level persistently exhibited by a recently promoted employee who find it difficult to cope with new demand of work may cause demotion;

(iii) Employees may also be demoted due to their inability to adjust to meet the rising

requirement of job resulting from changes in technology, methods and practices;

(iv) Demotion or stagnation may result if employee fastly gets old and incompetent on their jobs before their retirement age. This type of employees may not necessarily be demoted but may suffer stagnation taking away from their job schedules some of the difficult duties and responsibilities they can’t handle efficiently and re-assign them to other colleagues who are capable and should continue to enjoy promotion;

(v) Demotions are also administered as penalty for violation of organisation’s rules of

conducts. It is however important to note that it is wrong to use demotion to inflict penalty in

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order to make employee change attitude and behaviour at work. If demotion is designed to correct employee negative behaviour at work, it will take a long time to be effective, if it can produce any positive change at all.

This is because the employee demoted for disciplinary purpose would have to first painfully learn to overcome the psychological adjustment resulting from the loss of pay and status and at the same time learn to perform at the expected level. Demotion will first dampen his enthusiasm, morale and take the whole of his persons. The result will be a frustrated worker instead of the desired re-formed and hard-working and disciplined employee envisaged by the demotion exercise.

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

(i) Identify five reasons for personnel transfers from your working experience

(ii) Enumerate circumstances that will lead to employee demotion in organisations known to you

4.0 CONCLUSION

This unit has informed you on the concept, nature, rationale for employment transfers, advancement and demotion exercises in organisation. All these happened in order to reposition the organization.

5.0 SUMMARY

This unit continued to discuss various techniques for employee movement IN and OUT of the organisation. Emphasis are placed here on employee transfers; its concept, rationale, advantages and disadvantages. The unit also discusses employee advancement and demotions.

125 6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

Define Transfer and Outline four advantages and four disadvantages of frequent transfers of personnel

7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS

Armstrong, M. (1996) Personnel Management Practice: Kogan page H/D

Babayo, M. & Ekhator V. E. (1999) Public Administration: Concept and Application Tamaza publishing company. Zaria

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