Year-end can come with holiday presents, parties, and year-end bonuses. It’s also quite normal to do annual pay increases effective at the first of the new year.
These things are all good, but it may impact what the great resignation looks like at your office.
If year-end bonuses and raises are the norms in your company, your employees may hold off accepting that new job until the money is in their pockets. While companies shouldn’t base new hires’ salaries on their previous salaries, many do, and employees can use it as a negotiating tool. After all, why would they leave a job for less money than they make now? And who wants to quit three weeks before bonuses hit the bank account.
This isn’t to tell you not to give people raises and bonuses–you’ll undoubtedly lose your best employees if you do that. This is to tell you to prepare and plan. Here’s what you need to think about.
To keep reading, click here: If You Think the Great Resignation Is Bad, Just Wait Until January
Our annual bonuses get paid out in March, and a good number of people quit almost immediately afterwards. And it makes sense! If you knew you were going to get a good chunk of cash in a short amount of time, wouldn’t you hang around a bit longer? A lot of us joke about who we think is going to leave once the check clears, and also marvel at how good an offer someone must have received if they leave beforehand.
No one (here) holds it against anyone who gets their bonus and then leaves. That bonus is for work done over the last year – they earned it! It’s expected and just a cost of doing business.
If you have not been paying attention to both your business needs to operate and your employees response to what would help them achieve what should be a joint goal then you as a business don’t really care about your employees as individuals but view them as a cost. The businesses that have high turnover after bonuses usually run a cutthroat operation where those who “succeed” are usually the ones who take credit for the performance of individuals who are skilled enough to get job done but not allowed to develop as replacements for their supervisor.A good management team is constantly developing their workers to succeed and has a long range plan of action and is not threatened by loss of their employee to other positions within the company. That’s if the company has been a develop from within philosophy. The worst rated companies prefer high turnover even if they give yearly bonuses because they are under the illusion that they are saving some kind of labor costs by not keeping long term employment. Getting a bonus at work should not just be a monetary item especially if that bonus is a tax deduction for the company and an extra tax liability for the employee.
Compensation is tricky, diversity in incentives is always the right approach once you know who you’re managing/dealing with…