As the promotion season is now once again upon us, there are no doubt many of you who are expecting “on-time [1]” promotions for your efforts over the last few years[*]. The bad news for those of you non-managers in ‘middle management [2]‘ grades AD9 to AD11 is that when the DG lists come out in June you might be disappointed.
Of course, in all function groups and grades there will be many colleagues who will not be proposed by their DGs, and most will feel this unjustified and will appeal. What is a little different about these mid-level AD grades though is that there is a much greater degree of non-managers competing directly with managers for promotions.
Where the manager and non-manager have the same seniority in the same grade, and the same performance, we agree that the extra responsibility of people management should mean that the manager should in general be given precedence for promotion over the non-manger.
We remind you of the stated assessment criteria for promotion:
- the quality of your previous evaluation reports [**]
- the use of languages in the execution of duties
- the level of responsibilities exercised especially for people (but also could be for budgets or representing your unit/service/institution to others).
In recent years though we have seen certain DGs allocate a high proportion of their proposals in these grades as “fast” promotions to managers at the expense of the non-managers in the same grades who are not proposed for on-time promotions [***]. While this may sometimes be justified it often seems to occur where there is no evidence of under-performance of the non-manager, but rather they are just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with their quota needed for a people manager’s fast promotion.
In one extreme case last year, we saw a small DG where initially all the managers eligible for 1-year-faster-than-average promotions were proposed but none of the non-managers eligible for on-time promotions were.
As staff representatives we then of course contest this in the dialogues with directors general, but usually the changes agreed to at that stage are unfortunately very limited.
At Generation2004, we will monitor the situation this year and continue to analyse the statistical evidence to help us hold senior management to account.
We do not wish to downplay the contribution of the middle managers in these grades (Heads and Deputy Heads of Unit, and Heads of Sector) who have a weight of responsibility on their shoulders, and often work extremely hard and long hours.
However, in the absence of any guidance from the staff regulations on promotion rates for managers vs non-managers in these grades, we have doubts as to whether DGs should be systematically proposing such a high percentage of managers for fast promotions, when clearly many dedicated high-performing non-manager colleagues must be found as “victims” to pay the price for these manager fast promotions.
Some of you may be wondering, as non-managers, what you can do to avoid becoming one of these victims. There is unfortunately no easy way to avoid this happening to you. When you are eligible for your on-time promotion it helps if there are fewer managers eligible for fast promotions and it helps to be in a DG where a less “aggressive” approach is taken to fast manager promotions. However, this is of course easier said than done since mobility between DGs is not easy, and you will not want to base your choice of post solely on promotion related issues. In addition, the policies of directorates-general change through time with changes of directors-general. The numbers of managers eligible for fast promotions in a DG will also vary through time and be affected by the mobility of manager colleagues[****].
At Generation2004, we do not want to start publishing statistics on promotion policies of directorates-general or directors-general. We would however encourage senior managers [3] to reflect on what is the right balance for promotions in these grades to correctly incentivise and reward both managers and non-managers.
As always, we would love to hear from you. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us [4] or leave a comment below.
If you appreciate our work, please consider becoming a member of Generation 2004 [5].
[*] Our chart converts the percentages found in Staff regulations Annex I.B [6]to years.
[**] Probation reports cannot and should not be used for promotion purposes [7]. The presence of an ongoing disciplinary procedure [8] is not officially exclusionary, but there are examples of it being very much exclusionary.
[***] The distribution of promotion quotas to DGs is one of the 3 main criticisms we have of the promotions process. Here are the others.
1. There is no evidence that an Institution-wide comparison of merit took place at Joint Preparatory Group and Join Promotion Committee level.
2. An ex-ante-allocation of promotion possibilities among DGs is incompatible with an Institution-wide comparison of merits.
3. The variable quality of reports does not allow for transparent and reproducible comparisons of merit. (these 3 points were put in sysper on our behalf for several years as a ‘Minority position [9]‘)
[****] We take the opportunity here to recognise that we’ve changed our view on senior experts, while we have criticised this category in the past [10], we now see the value in not pushing staff into managing people as the only way forward and similarly to allow those already managing people to step away from that to do something different.
Recognition for Senior Experts: Addressing the systemic neglect of senior experts in promotion exercises. These colleagues are often overlooked in favour of those who manage people, contrary to Staff Regulations that view managerial and expert careers as equal. (Manifesto 2024 [11])