This is a very common myth in business. Bonuses in most situations lead to a decrease in productivity. https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work

This is a very common myth in business. Bonuses in most situations lead to a decrease in productivity. https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work https://smallbusiness.chron.com/bonuses-affect-employees-work-performance-11515.html https://smallbusiness.chron.com/bonuses-affect-employees-wor... https://hbr.org/2017/03/research-how-incentive-pay-affects-employee-engagement-satisfaction-and-trust https://hbr.org/2017/03/research-how-incentive-pay-affects-e... There's a ton of research out there on this. To simplify it basically if someone is doing mindless work like putting a cap on a bottle on an assembly line, then bonuses increase performance in the long term. But if they are doing complex work like writing software they decrease performance in the long term.