* Helping your staff make the most of your company's bonus program
You’ll remember that last time I began pointing to our Signature Series special section that reviews the coolest aspects of our readership. Today, we continue to look at You.
First of all, the 2004 Network World Salary Survey finds that benefits packages and overall compensation have become the No. 1 and 2 considerations. For the first time in two years, this means “challenge of work” has not taken the top spot. Clearly, insurance, bonuses, stock options and other types of compensation are becoming highly important again. If pay raises must limp along at less than 6% on average, then workers are looking for help with their cost-of-living expenses (like medical). They’re also eyeing that 8.2% average bonus increase to keep them happy.
When it comes to bonuses, though, some titles were less rewarded, as were workers in some regions. Help desk trainers took the biggest hit, losing 20.5% of their bonuses, bringing the total they expect in 2004 to a mere $620. Software and Web programmers expect to lose 5.3% to $2,330. Regionally, companies in the Southwest remained stingiest with bonuses, rolling them back 9.2% to $2,650.
Just because your company has a bonus program, don’t assume your staff knows how to make the most of it, our author (jbort@nww.com) says. These tips can help your employees get better bonuses.
* Make sure your employees truly understand how the bonus system operates. Some companies, particularly large companies, use standardized performance objective systems rather than the less rigid merit bonuses. Consider yourself lucky if your company uses a standardized bonus performance program, as more people tend to earn their bonuses under such systems.
* With merit bonuses, underscore that managers are looking to reward initiative. “We do annual bonuses in our company and also merit bonuses. Merit is at my discretion and is something I reward the employee with if a project has been done over and above the outcome originally expected. It’s for when the employee has gone the extra mile to prove that he’s owned the project from the get-go – as opposed to doing something I just asked him to do,” says one user.
* Help employees to think in terms of the bottom-line impact on their projects and to throw their grandest bonus-earning efforts into projects that can save, or make, the company the most money. If they are unsure, let them know that you, as their manager, will support their efforts to research a project’s cost implications – this is one of the ways to show initiative.
For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/you/2004/0726salary.html
For more stories in the You issue see: https://www.nwfusion.com/you/2004/
