Patna, March 18: Performance-based promotions are common in the corporate world. The same practice, however, is not followed for government employees, who get promotions only with seniority.

This archaic system is set to change. The state government is planning to do away with the old system and introduce a tinge of corporate culture as far as giving promotion to its employees is concerned. The government, in fact, is toying with the idea of introducing a system of benchmarking while considering the promotion of an employee.

As things stand now, promotion of state government employees is done on the basis of their seniority, annual confidential reports of past three years of the employees have no adverse entry and there is clearance from vigilance department regarding them.

The proposed benchmarking system does not talk of doing away with the existing system, rather it talks of adding some more points which would, to an extent, link the promotion with the performance of the employees.

“In case of regular promotions, the new benchmarking system would bring into play the performance of the past five years of an employee and promotion would only be given if the employees earn three good remarks in their annual confidential reports and no adverse remark in any of these five years,” a senior state government official, who has been closely associated with formulation of this proposal, told The Telegraph.

Five kinds of remarks can be given in the annual confidential reports of employees. They are “outstanding”, “very good”, “good”, “satisfactory” and “below average”.

The official said in case of promotion to senior ranks, the proposal talks of even stricter norms. For such posts the employees would have to earn three “very good” remarks in five years in the annual confidential report and there should be no adverse remark in it in any of these years. “This norm would be made applicable in case of promotion to posts having grade pay of Rs 7,600 or more,” the official added.

In case of promotion to senior most position of a cadre post, the proposal talks of introducing a competition. Names of three eligible persons would be put forward and selection would be made on the basis of a personal interview of the officers. “The interview board would have the discretion of awarding marks on the basis of the performance of candidates and only that person would be promoted to the top cadre post whose aggregate score would be the highest,” said the official.