65% of bosses rejected promotions in the last three years: study

Employees are not given promotions due to a lack of managerial capabilities.

In the past three years, 65% of Hong Kong Business leaders have denied promotions to employees, in reference to a new independent research by specialist recruiter Robert Half.

Based on the research, 46% of the respondents stated that lack of potential ability to lead is the top reason for not being granted a promotion. Other reasons include lack of experience (43%), lack of soft skills (42%), lack of technical skills (38%) and the availability of a more qualified internal (23%) or external candidate (7%).

Hong Kong bosses do recognize the potential negative outcomes of not giving promotions. 46% of the higher ups have let employees work with various teams while 42% of the other high authorities have given individual employees exclusive projects to work on.

Other common denominators include allowing employees to learn from each other (37%), devolving tasks (34%), and respectively calling for inputs in complicated situations and offering learning opportunities (21%).