What should be the criteria for promotion: Performance or Experience?

While performance should be the main criteria experience may also have to be given some waitage at times if you you want to keep the average or non performer also in the group/organization. There should be a mechanism which is poolproof enough to correctly measure the performance or non performance. People who are capable of steeling others performance or show of and make others beleive that they are better performers with their presentation skills are not uncommon raather it is very common now. There are also people do not bother or have time and skill to project their acheivements but feel that the organiztion should have a mechanism to recognoise their accheivements and the rewards should come on its own and not by begging. We have rules in this country while giving awards for recognition that onme should apply for an award to get them. Most of Government awards are given only to the applicants of award or lobbyists except in some case where their acheivements are publisised by media like for example in sports and games. There again you may have to have god fathers to get recognition.

value of experience is with knowledge as well as with performance only.

Its all about performance. Applicants with rich experience is expected to perform better

We are discussing about promotion.. Promotion for what? Surely we get promotion if the corporation we are working with get promoted in terms of sales , service etc. A new comer is never given promotion to a higher grade the day he joins. With the passage of time in the company, superiors decides his action for protecting the interest of the corporation. It means his experience is rewarded based on his experience and performance in the interest of the corporation.

Secondly you will find many people in the company who are working for the company but at all forum they will be cursing the policy of the company. These people based on their performance and attitude are judged and decisions are taken. These peoples in corporation are good for nothing and if these peoples are given promotion based on their length of service(here in discussion called experience) there is no doubt good people working under them are not be long with the corporation and the corporation will die at its own. PSU's are very good example of this.

Jai Hind

Santosh Sinha

My point is ...Performance has to a Criteria for promotion.....because we have lots of skilled people those who can perform very well in their sector....and from those set of skilled people we can gain more output....if we give them some chance to grow definetly they will grow my Organisation as well....also my company will grow....however my Experience people can share their experience and they will built my Organisation through their experience...but sometimes they might not be able to perform....so performance needs to be a major criteria for promotion it does not matter who so ever in the Q...either his Team lead/Supervisor....but performer needs to grow.....

Experience is sought on every interview or advertisement so all we need is to show a performance that too a consistent one.This give experience gradually.

According to me, performance should be the main criteria while considering promotions and increments. It is true that experience is important.  An experienced person is expected to perform better and guide his subordinates who are less esxperienced and who look up to him for learning more ideas  on the job.  However,  lethargic and non-performing persons who can not add value to the organisation or  it's products,  in spite of having vast experience, are not assets of  the organisation and therefore  do not merit considerastion for promotions/ increments (private companies usually terminate services of such employees, though Govt. Dept. may keep them due to statutory reasons).

Agree with you Shailena. To add further, consistent performance should be the criteria

Ravi well said, performance should be the deciding factor. I agree with you. Performance plays a vital role in the promotion of an employee. Everyone will have experience  but everyone cannot perform well. So performance has more weightage  than experience.

Thanks.... 

There are numerous criteria for promotion and one can not ignore anyone of them. If in the criteria list performance is at no.1 then experience should come in no.2. Nothing works in pure sense.

A blend of criteria is always better. Again you can not generalize something, it depends from organisation to organisation, individual to individual. Experience without performance is obviously useless and at the same time one can not perform if he is unexperinced. Performing is good but performing consistently is better. There is a saying which goes like this:-

What is the secret of success? Right decisions!

How do you make right decisions? From experience!

How do you get experience?By doing mistakes.

Thanks

Both the things are important for promotion. But if we have to consider one, the performance should be consider. As performance will bring the skilled, innovative people in the mainstream which will help the organisation to grow faster.

Yes, I strongly belive in performance which enhances not only the growth of the organization but also increases growth of individual. Ech and Every profit making companies only concerns with the growth of the company which only comes through the performance of the employee rather than experience of the any individual. If your company in the any sector of the business, performance should  only the criteria for appriciation for the employee.

So, performance is the only factor which measure any employee.

I am on this side of the debate just to illustrate a point. In my humble opinion, the dualism of Performance Vs experience is outdated. If one posits both the categories as strict opposites  for a starting point, you end up with these logical outcomes which may though be not exhaustive of all achievable possibilities:

1.A performer is experienced

2.A Non-performer is experienced

3 Non-Experience results in performance

4. Experience results in Non performance

A musician tunes his activity to achieve a certain behavioral pattern called applause from his target population called audience. The resultant applause signifies performance. A musician excels himself yet there is no applause from audience and it may signify there is no performance. A Musician after 100 performances knows that it doesnt matter if you play it wrong because they are going to applaud you any way because it happened the last 99 times and ends up in a fiasco. A musician making a debut amidst restless audience improvises a new tune and gains attention. These possible outcomes end up in equilibria of multiple outcomes On the other hand, ignoring Drucker and Jack Welch for a while and recast Performance and Experience in a Dialectic,such as that of Master-Slave of Hegel. A master derives his identity as master in comparison to his slave. A slave loses his identity as a master and remains as a slave in font of his master. yet the slave knows something called a Master to grow up as. And a Master knows from his slave that he cant degenerate. The opposites dont end up in stasis. They grow teleologically. A tree is implicit in a seed. A seed has potential to become a tree. The point is no longer that whether Experienced can perform or Performers can be non experienced. It can be as in master- slave dialectic, How can we make non- experienced perform and  prevent an experienced from slipping into a complacent non-performance. The answer is Growth Values where the dialectic is resolved in a higher and unique equilibrium before it agitates into a new one.

I would totally agree with Mathew as there are few jobs for which experience plays a greater role than the performance during that year / period considered. When it comes to jobs which involves mostly of analytical abilities it has to be the performance

In business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.                                                                                     In my opinion Performance is the key to reach the heights.

As  much I could gather by my stint as a professional,experience

is nothing but a collection of mistakes either yours or others 

which you gather over years sometimes by chance,sometimes

by choice which helps you in not repeating the same again.Now

if at all this has to be classified as talent ,this talent can be

used to promote librarians or book authors or someone who

writes a biography but certainly cannot be generalized in all

fields.Moreover if at all experience is to be given so much

of importance it can be in situation where it helps in

improving your performance.What's the sense in carrying

a baggage of experience which can be of no use to anybody.

In the end company has hired someone to perform.Right ?

If somebody who is performing is denied promotion

just because of not having grey hair will just boost  sales

"Garnier hair shades",especially grey ones ;-).How much

it is going to help the company, other than Garnier, is

debatable.

Performance should always be in priority whenever we talk about the Promotions or appraisals because we are living in a highly competitive world and today every body wants to be the number one and so the same company wants. If a person perform well his or her duties and obligations every company promote him or her.

Today "Fast and Steady wins the race" not 'slow and steady'.

For different types of business it differs. For Technology firms performance can be the benchmark while for others some experience with the regulations, roles and processes can be the criteria.

performance is the outcome of one`s efficiency. it shows hard work and interest. so a hike in salary actually encourages to put in more effort. but of course a naive employee without  experience skills cannot manage handling a team. everything is learnt on trial and error based method.

The ideal criteria for promotion should be 50% performance,  30% potential and 20% for experience.

When I say performance, I refer to consistent performance in different areas. Performance in one area alone can not determine the ability of the perform. As a banker, I have seen high performer when promoted has become a poor manager. Therefore, I am of the view, performance appraisal and developmental needs should go together to promote individual. Experience alone or performance alone should not be the criteria for promotion.

It is certainly performance. Though due weightage should be given to both the attributes but according to me it is performance which takes an organisation to heights and it is only performance which keeps employees motivated. This way employees keeps organisations competitive.

if a person can outperform an experienced person who is sitting for years and doing no good for the company then what is the fun of that person. the thing is that if an experienced person is performing then his/her experience should be taken in consideration, else while he/she should be thrown out. because performance is the key factor and it shows dedication and commitment of a person towards the work.

While experience is not replaceable as a human asset, unless it translates into visible performance the experience has no value for an employer. Experience is something that helps someone do a job better and thus should improve performance. A prmotion should be based on a mixed value that comprises experience and performance, but performance should always be the deciding factor.

This probably is the biggest and oldest discussion during year ends. It may seem unfair or de motivating if performance is given preference over Tenure, this however if in line with the single common objective of all organizations - GROWTH. Most managers will try to get as much balance as possible, probably a 75-25 in favors of performance. At the end of the day we owe it to the high performers, something as basic as the monthly salary and any other thing around it depends on how well the organization did. No harm is sharing growth with the performers. no company ever progressed because that had this huge percentage of mediocre performers.

Yes, Performance must be the measure for promotion. Since it not only lures the performer but also trigger the minds of juniors to show their talents. Thereby the organisation can bloom a lot. Whereas appraisal based on experience can not. It makes all the members of the organisation to wait for the particular time period (experience) to get reward. Neverthless it adds to the development of the organisation. 

One can have lot of experience and donot perform upto expectation then what to do? Is he/she promoted?

Experience counted when you perform better than others.............

Its not that like, leaving behind 10 years experienced and promoting just 3 years guy.

Within the group one have less experience also can be promoted based on performance.

hiiiiiii piyush

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

diya h r u.

as per my opinion performance is the best criteria to increase the performance.

If these two thing goes with hand in hand it will be useful.

Dear All,

The question is a leading one where one has to choose one which is not the criteria for promotions.

Since performance of a team matters in an achievement depending on the job role given.

Its always experience with performance that matters and more so its the teams performance that one has to see and in the team who has contributed comparatively better has to be relatively given promotion even though many of his colleagues also do have the same experience.

performance does not come just like that it has some important ingredients,that's initiative, pursuing for best output, co-operation with the team,achieve with lots of constraints present in a project of team work and  above all the team should have a sanction in that promotion part .

It could be assessed in any quarter or project based or project delivery schedule based.

performance of a team and the performance of a member in a team matters a lot.

more so the consistent performance over the assessing year or period matter.

These are my views. anyone can comment or contradict with your recommendations.

Major M Rajendran

rmariagn@yahoo.com

Promotion should be based only on performance and maturity level of the employee. Up to sertain level only performance should be the criteris and once you reach a team leader position or manager level performance together with maturity level should be the creteria. There are three aspects in promotion, one only increased monitary benifits, second, only the position and power as a rsult an opportunity to show once ability in building the organization, and the third both monitary benfits comensurate with the position and power. To get a position with certain powers one should have reached the level of maturity required for a position of power. There could be sertain perks associated with power but the salry grade may be same as that of others having similar qualification and skill sets and certain level of experience in those skills.

Mear experience of number of years in a position or level doesnot mean any thing. Experience should be related to performance and ultimately monetray gains to the organization.  An employee deservs a promotion or higher pay only when such actions results in improved performance and hence improved earning for the organization. At times organizations need to promote people to reduce attrition rate or just to keep the employee happy and do reular work. Every work can be perform oriented. Take for example a security guard. He cannot remain at the same level till retirement. He can be innovative contineously learn and improve his own work.

Monetray benifits given to an employee can be based on cost of living and length of service (experience) to give him adequate avings potential to take care of him after retirement. promotion is ment only for those who can perform and build the organization , take it to new hights year by year and adopt them selves to changing requirements.

Yes it should on performance only. If a candiate having lot exeprience and he/she is showing experience and no production means why the candiate doing for the company.

The company management should think/ conduct appraisal to promote a candiate.

In some companies giving incentives and promotions based on their relationship with he/she without considering the performance during the period.

It is only performance and performance.Experience in terms of number of years has no meaning if it is not generating efficiency. We should remember that there are talented persons who comprehend the 10 yrs experience within 5 yrs.Also, the 'EXPERIENCE' is somtimes made redundant on account of CHANGE MANAGEMENT.

There are some senior positions where talents have to combine with SEASONING AND MATURITY and here also experience alone will not suffice.

I feel it ahould be done purely on performance base but at the same time we should consider the exp. as well. But exp. will be the secondary factor !