Promotions Are Given, Not Earned

Today I’d like to address one of the most pervasive and woefully-inaccurate myths in all of working America, the idea that one can “earn” a promotion.  When somebody says they have “earned” or “deserve” a promotion what they are really saying is that they have performed well at their current job and believe the company should reward them for good performance by giving them a higher-paying job with more responsibility and more power.

Unfortunately, companies are in the business of making money, not rewarding top-performing employees.  Unless giving you a promotion will directly increase your employer’s profits, you will not be promoted regardless of how well you have performed at your current post.  Unfortunately, there are quite a few good reasons why it’s usually in your boss’s best interests to keep you where you are rather than promote you.  Knowing what these reasons are will better prepare you to mitigate their impact and snag that promotion.

Companies Promote People For Their Own Benefit, Not Yours

Despite what people like to believe, your worth to your employer is proportional to your ability to directly (or indirectly) increase your company’s profits.  Your value as an employee has absolutely nothing to do with how well you do your job,  but how much your position contributes to the bottom line.  It could very well be that once you’ve reached an adequate level of performance, your contribute very little extra to the company’s profits.  Thus, you are worth the same to the company even if you do your job twice as well.

That doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels, however, since you have no way of knowing what that minimum level of acceptable performance is.  The point is, how well you do your job is likely to be largely irrelevant to your employer once your performance has reached a certain threshold (unless you work in a very small company) and is therefore unlikely  to help you get promoted in the future.

Promoting You Is A Risky Proposition

The most common reason hard-working employees get over-looked time and again when it comes time to fill a new position is that the business perceives promoting their best employees to be a risky move.  When a company promotes somebody from within, they have to fill two positions:  the new position (which you will hopefully get) and your old position.  Since you were already doing a good job at your last position, promoting you actually leads to extra risk for the business because they now have the risk of filling your old position with somebody who doesn’t do nearly as good a job as you did.

Additionally, doing well in an old position doesn’t mean you’ll do as well at your new position.  The skills that allowed you to succeed before may not apply to the new position or the work environment may be different enough to seriously limit your effectiveness.  If it doesn’t work out, your employer now potentially has two under-performing employees rather than just one.  Had they hired an outsider to fill the new job, at least they could count on you to continue performing well at your current position, even if the new guy doesn’t work out.  Thus, the hiring risk to the business is essentially cut in half by hiring an outsider.

The Future Is What Matters, Not Your Past

The main reason you haven’t gotten that promotion you so covet is that in the grand scheme of things, your past accomplishments are pretty much irrelevant.  The only thing that matters, and the only thing companies consider when making decisions about who to promote, is how you’re likely to perform in the future.  All the dazzling past accomplishments in the world aren’t going to get you promoted if the company isn’t certain you will be just as effective in the future at your new position.

So push that over-grown sense of entitlement to the back of your mind and get back to work.  You’ll never earn a promotion through hard work.  Your only hope is to make your superiors aware of how much money you would make them if only they would promote you.  Past accomplishments are certainly a part of that, but you can’t lean on them too much.  After all, the first question out of your boss’s mouth when you ask for a promotion is likely to be “…what have you done for me lately?”