Promotion and Dismissal Errors in Teams

Mistakes in HR Decisions: Why Promotions and Terminations Can Destroy Teams

In crisis situations, managers often resort to simple personnel measures: promoting the top performer or terminating an employee who's falling behind on KPIs. These steps seem logical, but in practice, they lead to a decline in departmental performance. A strong expert loses effectiveness in a new role, and termination fails to solve systemic problems, leaving the company without valuable resources.

Why Promoting an Expert Leads to Double Damage

A promotion is perceived as a reward for past achievements: deep product knowledge, team respect, consistent results. However, a leadership role requires different skills—delegating tasks, resolving conflicts, motivating people, and making decisions under uncertainty.

The expert may lack these competencies or be unwilling to develop them. The result: losing a strong performer in their old position and gaining a weak manager in the new one. The department stagnates due to poor leadership and the overloading of one individual.

Termination Based on KPIs: Ignoring the Root Causes of Failure

Focusing on numbers simplifies analysis: the target wasn't met—the employee is up for termination. But low performance often masks a mismatch between the person and the role.

• A good expert fails as a manager.
• A negotiator struggles in a rigid, regulated environment.
• A systematizer can't handle tasks requiring speed and pressure.

Termination destroys potential that could have been unlocked in a different function, worsening talent shortages.

Key Blind Spots in Personnel Assessment

Mistakes arise from conflating current performance with potential for a different role. Businesses treat past results as a guarantee of future success, ignoring:

• Role Competencies: In a crisis, you need a 'push-through' leader; in stable times, a systematizer.
• Employee Profile: Motivation, leadership, resilience, conflict management.
• Mismatch: Is the problem with the person or the function?

Practical Failure Scenarios

In practice, the 'strong candidate' turns out to be an expert without management skills. The 'weak' one is a resource in the wrong role. An unnoticed employee, carrying key processes, burns out without recognition.

Reassigning roles is often more effective than termination: a specialist weak in sales might excel in client retention or process management.

Checklist Before Making an HR Decision

Before promoting or terminating, check:

• Alignment of the role with current needs (acceleration vs. stabilization).
• Real skills: not just KPIs, but leadership potential, motivation.
• Alternatives: reassignment, development, or retention.

When a Promotion is Harmful, Even with Merits

A strong professional motivated by mastery, not management, will avoid delegation and tough conversations in a new role. Formal growth leads to team degradation.

When You Can't Ignore Potential

A person already performing leadership functions informally risks burning out without promotion. The company loses a pivotal center of the department.

What's Important

• Avoid linear solutions: they ignore the person-role mismatch.
• Diagnose role competencies and employee profile before making changes.
• Consider reassignments as an alternative to termination.
• Check motivation: not everyone wants to manage.
• Unnoticed leaders are a key reserve for growth.

Mature Management Decision

Personnel changes require diagnosis: Is the person ready for the next level? Do they need a different role or development? Only after analysis should you choose promotion, reassignment, or termination. Without this, decisions are blind gambles, costly for the business.

— Editorial Team