BBC Content Team
How To Determine Employee Bonuses
In addition to a paycheck that an employee works for, another way for employees to be motivated and earn extra is through bonuses. Bonuses are a way to motivate employees when they have achieved or completed a goal, whether that be finishing a project or reaching a number of tasks completed. To improve the morale for employees, setting up bonuses for them is something that is widespread throughout business.
There are many different types of bonuses that can be given such as sign-on, weekly, anniversary, holiday, annual, quarterly, etc. There are also more broad categories to classify bonuses such as individual or company wide bonuses to recognize either one specific employee or a group of people. Even though there are a lot of different types it is important to provide the right opportunities for bonuses so that there is a balance. Giving too much or too little bonuses could be detrimental to employee motivation so it is important that you find a balance in between those extremes.
The first step that can be taken to set up a plan for bonuses is to create goals while focusing on whether it will pertain to the individual or the whole company. Individual goals can be important because it is for one specific job making it a better motivator than something like having the company grow a certain amount or something like a quarterly bonus. Individual goals need to be simple and achievable so that the employee can work towards it and know how close they are to the goal. Company wide goals instead show the growth of the company as a whole and allows the employee to share in the overall success of the company. After that you need to assign an amount of money to the bonus and make sure that it is an amount that will be substantial to the employee. Then you can decide when the bonus will be given to best encourage the employee. One last decision to take into account is the taxes that will come with assigning bonuses and how this will affect it.
Once you are done with the planning the final things to do is to inform your employees about it. This includes information like who each bonus is for, how much does the bonus give, when it is given, and if the amount given grows over time. That is how you successfully implement bonuses to motivate employees to achieve success.