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Anecdotally, I have a bonus linked to my company profit that are usually between half and full month of salary. This does not motivate me at all. I actually al
by seren 11y ago
Anecdotally, I have a bonus linked to my company profit that are usually between half and full month of salary.
This does not motivate me at all. I actually always forget about it until I receive the amount each year.
This is seems counter intuitive but I work in such a big company that I don't even understand which profits are taken into account to calculate it. Is it the global profit of my division ? or all divisions for my country or region ? (I actually believe this is the latter).
So some year you deliver a project late and you get a big bonus and the next year, you are exceptionally on time and don't get anything.
I am sure it works for smaller company where you can measure very directly the effect of your contribution, but past a certain point, it is hard to measure or understand your impact.
- jwdunne 11y agoThere's actually a lot of material out there on this I.e extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Money is an extrinsic motivator. Interest and enjoyment are intrinsic motivators. There are healty benefits linked to working a job based on high intrinsic motivation. Using extrinsic motivators could actually harm intrinsic motivation in the long run too. Long story short, rewards based on money may not increase but actually reduce work enjoyment. Though, if you enjoy making money in of itself...
- galfarragem 11y agoMoney in most cases is the best motivator. A 10K bonus might not be relevant when you make 400K but is crucial when you make 20K.. Paternalist employers try to subvert this common sense idea and add cheap perks to motivate employees. Of course most times it doesn't work.
- neogodless 11y agoMoney motivates in the short-term, especially when 10K is life-changing. 10K is not likely to make a job great or make someone do a much better job if they already make 150K.
- jchendy 11y ago> Money in most cases is the best motivator. That is demonstrably false. > The fact that there is little evidence to show that money motivates us, and a great deal of evidence to suggest that it actually demotivates us, supports the idea that that there may be hidden costs associated with rewards. https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv
- maxxxxx 11y agoMy bonus which is in the range of 10-20% of yearly income definitely makes me feel more appreciated.
- noobiemcfoob 11y agoYou bring up a good distinction about the bonus as a percentage of your income. In contrast, my bonuses are on the order of 2-5%. I appreciate them, but they're so small overall and so removed from my actual efforts in the company that it mostly comes across as noise in my budget.
- ktRolster 11y agoUnless they reduced your salary by 20% when they hired you.
- LoSboccacc 11y agoI see it more like another side of the same coin. If in an average bigco you can hardly have an impact, how could you be ever engaged? The sense of ovnership/meaningfulness is shredded by it being a bigco and you being a number, which no amount of encouraging could overcome (unless you are a top brass, that is, but then you are in the circle of ivestors and have an impact already)
- seren 11y agoI am motivated by other factors. Namely I am working on medical devices, so in the end, my work can save people life (or kill them if something goes wrong!), so that is enough for me to want to do a good job and put the products in the hands of customers. I do not necessarily have a direct impact on the global profits because the product I am working on is lost in a sea of other products, but for "my product" I definitely have an impact on the quality of device, and ultimately the patient.