With the holidays rapidly approaching, I have a question for those of you who work a traditional job: Are you expecting a bonus this year?
It's hard to believe how much things have changed since last year. There were still so many people out of work and struggling at this point in 2020. I got this letter last year from a small business owner who couldn't afford holiday bonuses. https://www.thepennyhoarder.co...cant-afford-bonuses/ I really felt for him because it sounded like he had been good to his employees and made sacrifices to avoid layoffs.
But oh how the tides have turned! Now businesses can't find enough people to hire. Starting pay for entry-level jobs is higher than ever and hiring bonuses have become common. With businesses struggling to find and retain workers, are you expecting your boss to be more generous than usual this holiday season?
On that note: If a company decides not to give bonuses but has given them every year, should they let employees know ahead of time? (I know we're all thinking of Clark Griswold's Jelly of the Month Club surprise here.) That was the letter writer's dilemma: He was wondering whether to tell employees in September that he couldn't afford bonuses.
Whenever you do something regularly, like giving bonuses, you create an expectation. That doesn't mean you're making a lifelong commitment to the bonuses flowing forever. But I think the kind thing to do is to give a head's-up that it won't be coming. At my old job, we got holiday bonuses every year. Then we were notified a few days before Christmas (in a memo with a sad-face pug in a Santa hat) that we wouldn't be getting bonuses, even though the company was having a great year.
Should we have counted on bonuses? Of course not. But it was reasonable to expect that we'd get them, and everyone was really disappointed. It would have felt a lot more respectful had they just let us know a few weeks in advance that bonuses weren't happening.
I'd love to hear your thoughts!