Employee Transfers
- A transfer is a change in where someone works. It happens when an employee moves from one job to another without going through a big change in his duties, responsibilities, skills needed, status, or pay. A transfer does not mean that someone is promoted or demoted or that their status or responsibilities change.
- E. B. Flippo said, “A transfer is a change in job where the new job is basically the same as the old one in terms of pay, status, and duties.”
- According to Dale Yoder, a transfer is when an employee is moved from one job to another without any changes in pay or responsibility. When you transfer, your status and responsibilities may not change at all, or you may be promoted or demoted.
- In this way, a transfer is when an employee moves from one job, section, department, shift, plant, or position to another in the same or a different location, but keeps the same salary, status, and responsibilities.
- Why the Transfer Was Done
- People usually use transfers to do the following:
- To Meet the Needs of the Organization
- When there are changes at work, job assignments may need to be changed so that the right person is in the right job.
- Changes in these areas include technology, the amount of work that needs to be done, the schedule for that work, the products that are made, the quality of those products, the way jobs are organised, changes in the job market, moving workers around or reducing the number of workers in the same section to avoid layoffs, and filling in the gaps that may appear when people leave or when business needs to be adjusted.
- To put it simply, the goal of transfers is to keep jobs stable within an organisation.
- To Do What Employees Ask
- There are times when an employer asks for a transfer to happen. A worker may need to be transferred if they want to work for a different boss in a department or region with lots of opportunities for advancement, in or near their home or a place that interests them, doing a challenging job, etc.
- To make sure that employees are better used
- If management thinks that an employee isn’t doing his job well enough or satisfactorily, they can move him to another position where they think he will be more useful and his skills will be better utilised.
- So that employees can do more things,
- People can be moved from one job to another to help them learn new skills. Job rotation might help an employee get ready for future jobs that are more difficult.
- To Change the Workforce
- People can be moved from a plant with less work to one with more work. So, workers who have been working for a company are not fired, but instead are moved to a different job.
- To Help the Employee: Transfers can be made to help employees who are too busy or have been doing dangerous jobs for a long time. To break the employee’s monopoly, a transfer may also be made. The environment at work might not be good for a worker’s health. He could ask to be moved to a different area where the weather might not be bad for his health.
- To cut down on disagreements and problems
- If an employee doesn’t get along with coworkers in a certain section or department, they might be moved to a different area to avoid problems.
- To Punish the Employees: Transfers may be used as a form of punishment to send employees who are doing bad things to faraway, remote places.
- To Keep a Tenure System Going
- In the government’s senior administrative services, businesses, and places where management trainees are hired once a year, employees don’t stay in the same job for long. Instead, they are moved from job to job so that they can get a variety of experience and skills and so that they don’t get involved with political groups outside of work.
- To deal with issues related to family
- Transfers happen because of family issues, especially for women employees. When women get married, they want to move in with their husbands, which means they have to be transferred or quit their jobs.
- Different kinds of Moving an employee
- Different types of transfers can be put into groups based on their purpose or unit (A).
- Transfers of Production
- There are often too few or too many workers in different parts of a plant or in different plants within the same company. If a department has too many workers, they have to be let go unless they are moved to another department. Production transfers are transfers that are made to avoid layoffs like these.
- Replacement Transfers: A replacement transfer is when a senior worker is sent to take over the job of a new or junior worker when that worker is fired or moved to another position. Sometimes, it’s just a short-term deal to use the services of senior leadership.
- Versatility Transfers: Employees are given versatility transfers to help them be flexible and good at more than one skill. Its goal is to train people for a wide range of jobs that are similar but have different tasks. It helps both the employees get ready for promotions and the employers find the best people to fill the higher positions.
- Shift Transfers: When the unit works in shifts, workers are moved from one shift to another to do the same jobs. When shifts are regularly run, some businesses may hire people to work that shift full-time. Other times, employees are rotated from one shift to another as a matter of practise, since many employees don’t like working the second or third shift because it gets in the way of their social or family plans.
- Transfers for Repair
- Because employees ask for remedial transfers to happen, they are also known as personal transfers. There are times when employees are moved because they didn’t get along with their boss or other workers in the department, or because they were put in the wrong place the first time.
- He might be too old to keep doing his regular job, or the conditions of his job might not be good for his health. If the job is boring or repetitive, the worker might get bored and would do better with a change.
- Transfers for Safety
- These kinds of transfers are done as a safety measure to make sure that employees don’t abuse their power or steal money. There are more chances of misusing office or taking money without permission in some projects than in others. It is usually written in an organization’s transfer policy that a worker can’t stay in the same job for more than three years.
- (B) Based on the Unit
- Transfers in Sections
- Within the department, these moves happen from one section to another. Usually, workers are moved around so that they can be trained and ready to take on tasks in different parts of the department.
- Transfers between departments
- Departmental transfer is the act of moving people from one department in the plant to another. People are moved between departments if the work is mostly the same or very similar, like office work or routine tasks.
- Transfers Between Plants
- If the same management is in charge of more than one plant, people can be moved from one plant to another for different reasons. Inter-plant transfers are the name for these kinds of moves.
- Benefits
- Relations Improvement: It makes relationships between bosses and workers better.
- Increases Motivation: Because it breaks up the monotony, it makes people more motivated and productive.
- Guarantees Future Promotions: It helps employees get ready for future promotions.
- More Productivity: It makes the organisation more productive and effective as a whole.
- Makes People Happier at Work: It makes people happier at work for the time being.
- Improvement: It helps the current employees get better at what they do.
- Stabilization: It helps keep work requirements from changing too much.
- Fixing: It fixes the wrong placements.
- Disadvantages:
- Transfers from one place to another are very inconvenient and cost the employee and his family a lot of money because they have to find new housing, pay for their children’s schooling, and other things.
- Trouble Adjusting: The employee had trouble getting used to their new job, place of work, environment, boss, and coworkers.
- Loss of Time: Moving from one place to another takes a lot of time.
- Reduces Employee Contribution: When an employee transfers within the company, their contribution goes down.
- A Bad Effect: Transfers based on discrimination lower morale, job satisfaction, commitment, and contribution.