Melina Murray

I have been thinking about bonuses lately. Specifically bonuses tied to performance, whether company or individual. Overall, I DO think bonuses must be tied to performance. However, there are a couple areas that I have seen the “motivation” of bonuses backfire and cause immense “de-motivation”. Although I am talking about bonuses for non-sales employees in this case, it can relate to sales people too.

When individual goals are set by management to unreachable, unrealistic levels, the intention of making them “reach for the stars” becomes null and void. While I understand the idea behind doing this is to push employees even harder, encourage intense productivity, there is a line between aiming high and setting an unreachable bar. In these cases, the employee tends to become frustrated and defeated. Productivity goes down, not up. Both sides end up losing.

The other area that causes problems is when goals are set, then company direction/plans change without changing the goals. If the new direction (projects, resources, etc) do not support or relate to the previously set goals- AND- the goals are not reset, how can the employee possibly make their goals and bonus?

The best case solutions in these situations are when managers see the conflict and work with the employee to mitigate the discrepancy and reset or adjust goals. Simply making an effort on the manager’s part can go a long way in diffusing frustration that situations like this can cause.