Incentives, Bonuses, Pay Raise and Special Bonus

It’s agreed that performance-based incentives and bonuses is an attractive strategy because it is flexible and allows companies to reward the employees for their good work. 

But what happens when a company faces with tight corporate budgets and an uncertain economic climate? Or if the organization is not having a good year or the financial outcome shows a steep decline?

In such event of financial blow, the idea of trimming or withholding incentives and bonuses can be applied; at least, it provides a way for companies to create incentives for productivity.

But then, there’s a risk of ‘employee disengagement’ when bonuses and other performance-based pay gets cancelled. In other words, bonuses help employees to be highly engaged, and they do better work in the company.

When CEOs frankly discloses the fiscal cliff and its inability to go ahead, as usual, for bonuses and performance-based incentives, then it becomes an obligation for employees to make a show of true loyalty, with their patience and unfaltering morale. 

At such commitment of employees, CEOs should promise a better year ahead, if the company performs well, with an additional strategy to reward their top performers, raise salaries and give spot bonuses from lower ranks of workers to boost their enthusiasm.

Finally, here’s something else to think about: Like someone who gets paid for his work performance, there should be a bigger bonus for managers who possess a great sense of safe humor: humor that cements rather than divides relationships, humor that laughs with people, not at people. 

Yea, because they are indeed key leaders who dispense their roles like company doctors—they check the pulse of the workplace, and come up with fit solutions to rectify the work culture. Perhaps, to put this concept into practice, one would take it as a joke.

In fact, a research finding from the Hay Group’s McClelland Centre for Research and Innovation found a positive correlation between the size of executives’ bonuses and their use of humor. The study also found that outstanding executives use humor more than twice as often as the so-called average executives. That’s plain message that CEOs should rather hire someone with a good sense of humor than someone with a more grim character. 

At least, when the work culture is laced with good humor, CEOs can witness employee motivation, effective communication, an atmosphere of trust and frankness, a burst of creativity, and above all cordial relationships that clears misconceptions and differences among colleagues.

So, my piece of advice is: besides bonuses and performance-based pay, let there be a special bonus for those who possess a good sense of (safe) humor doing a better job. 

After all, humor is one of the best catalysts for innovative thinking, which makes logical, given that both humor and innovation are about integrating unrelated ideas and looking at something in a new and different light while maintaining a more balanced perspective and overcoming obstacles.