Dear All,

We are old consumers durables Company mainly engaged in manufacturing & marketing of electronics components such as FBT, Speaker, yoke etc with the total strength of about 1300 employees.

The employee turn over is quite low in the organization, generally company management do not believe in firing people. There is majority of people who have more than 15 years tenure with the organization.

The present state of manpower is as under:

1. The 40% managers are promoted from the position of lowest staff cadre .The basic qualification of these managers are either 10+2, ITI or graduate.

2. Similarly in officers grade majority of officers (about 60% ) in the company are promotees who have joined the organisation in the workmen grads . They are mainly matric or even some of them none materic.

3. The promotions are mainly given with the objective of increasing salary rather than potential assessment..

4. Now the problem is that educated incumbents intakes are not able to survive due to the above state of manpower.

I request you all to give your open suggestions on the following issues:

1. How to reward these people with out promoting
2. What should be the career development plan?
3.Should there be two different promotion policy one for qualified personnel and other for the none qualified.
4.How to keep motivated those employees who are having better qualifications and working with promotees.

Please give your opinion liberally and suggest a policy framework to meet out this challenge.

Hope to hear from you soon.

With Warm Regards,

Mba Aspirant

I believe the following pts. can help you subject to the approval of the gurus.......

1. You can take help of VRS to streamline the manpower and reducing the average age.

2. You can clearly separate increments from promotions, i.e. you need not give promotions every time you are increasing the salary.

3. you should emphasize on performance based promotions & increments......that has to be very transparent so that no one should have the grudge.....neither the younger ones and not the old employees. but definitely should adhere to the bell curve.

4. you can make some conscious efforts towards training the older staff......or can think of some company sponsored higher education.......

5. Before introducing VRS you can evaluate the concept of hiring FTC....that is Fixed Term contract employees for one year or two.........and you can then attach these people to the older ones under the buddy mentor system......so that the older employees can do away with the feeling that there jobs are in jeopardy as these people whom they will be training will be FTCs....in the meantime these young guys and girls can have the download of the knowledge from the older ones and you can at the end of the contract or in between evaluate the performance of these FTCs, who are performing well can be absorbed by the company , the rest can be parted with........

6. You can even set the guidelines that, to get promoted to a particular level or grade the person has to have a minimum qualification......but I am not sure as to how well these policies can be digested by the employees as you said that yours is a very old organization, so it can even come as a shock to the workforce and they can retaliate in a harsh manner.

I invite the comments of my gurus on this.

shantanuji