Employee Bonus Schemes - Shafted

Kingdom34

Kingdom34

Kingdom34

Associate
Joined
6 Apr 2016
Posts
486
Hi All

Just want to know peoples opinions and experience.

Our company seem to be using a "weighted" bonus scheme that kicks in at 80%

Ive just been paid out at 77% of the target, when if it was a straight forward scheme i would have been paid out 92.4%

So we have 4 parts to the scheme and B,C,D are separate with A the company sales target.

Part A - 70%

Part B - 20%
Part C - 5%
Part D - 5%

This is how i calculate it:

Part A - achieved 94%....so 65.8% of 70%

Part B - achieved 102%....so 20.4% of 20%
Part C - achieved 20%...so 1% of 5%
Part D - achieved 104%....so 5.2% of 5%
Total - 92.4%

But because the B,C,D part only kicks in at 80% and mine apparently equates to 88% i only achieved about 50% of that part of the bonus....which i find ludicous and very very demoralising.

Basically Part C are reviews and weve been set these unachievable time consuming pieces of work in the last 6 months...but what looked on the face of it, only achieving 1 out of 5....me think ok its a loss of 4%....has meant ive lost out on £200 of bonus....which is absurd.

So my question is, has anyone else experienced this type of bonus scheme?
Also i dont recall receiving any official paperwork stating this was the scheme outlined and the maths behind it.

I had to fight last half bonus's because they were double weighted, now being single im still being sh&fted it seems.

I hate office politics
 
Our employee bonus is mostly affected by the decisions of management, which wouldn't be too bad if when we didn't receive our bonus nor did they, unfortunately we often only get 1 out of 4 bonuses available if any, yet management seem to always receive the maximum possible.
 
I've yet to receive a bonus in my working life and am saving myself the disappointment of never receiving one by taking the assumption I will never get one, If that makes sense lul.

#werkhard
 
Many places are no longer paying out bonuses at all feel lucky :P I've not had a proper bonus since 2013 - though have had a smattering of performance based rewards and/or other incentives that have added up to quite a bit so I can't complain too much.
 
Rroff said:
Many places are no longer paying out bonuses at all feel lucky :P I've not had a proper bonus since 2013 - though have had a smattering of performance based rewards and/or other incentives that have added up to quite a bit so I can't complain too much.
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Totally understand your stance and im appreciative of what i get...but i find the calculations immoral....but its hard to see past this....you either get one in the correct manner or not at all in my eyes..

Id rather have a straight forward payrise instead of all this "demoralising, even though ive hit most targets but still a joke of a payout"

If your going to do something, at least do it correctly. Plus with a baby on the way, money is tight. Bit of a kick in the coconuts
 
It seems reasonable to me that some parts of the targets are more important than others and so are weighted accordingly.

If that wasn't shared or communicated properly then that's a bummer and you should let your management know you're pretty disapointed and demoralised by it. If they're not going to do anything about it then you really need to either get over it or get a new job - otherwise it'll hang over you and impact your work for ages.
 
Kingdom34 said:
Totally understand your stance and im appreciative of what i get...but i find the calculations immoral....but its hard to see past this....you either get one in the correct manner or not at all in my eyes..

Id rather have a straight forward payrise instead of all this "demoralising, even though ive hit most targets but still a joke of a payout"

If your going to do something, at least do it correctly. Plus with a baby on the way, money is tight. Bit of a kick in the coconuts
Click to expand...

Was being in a way flippant hence the :p it is quite demoralising when you don't get the bonus deserved.
 
A place I worked at only put aside a certain amount for staff bonuses. Even if all the staff were excellent, a lot were downgraded due to the finite cash supply. Of course this didn't apply to senior management.
 
Kingdom34 said:
But because the B,C,D part only kicks in at 80% and mine apparently equates to 88% i only achieved about 50% of that part of the bonus....which i find ludicous and very very demoralising.
Click to expand...

given what you posted immediately before what does that mean? Where do the 80%, 88% and 50% come from in the context of the earlier breakdown you posted?

Though regardless of that performance targets can often be a bit hit and miss - what you might want to look at (if available to you) is the performance of your colleagues... did everyone have low scores for part C, how does your overall % compare with theirs... forget the arbitrary targets set at the beginning of the year what you really want to know is are you a top performer - if you are then book a meeting with your manager and just argue that, aggressively if needed.

Arbitrary targets are meaningless if you can point out that you're pulling your weight more than anyone else. If not then are you at least performing to a similar standard to the average team member? Again meeting time... no leverage to really get aggressive in this instance but there is reason to put forwards the idea that some targets were unrealistic and that you've performed well/consistently. If there have been projects or events that have disrupted normal day to day work then perhaps cite them too as a reasons why targets set at the beginning of the year ought to be adjusted retrospectively.
 
You need to provide much more detail about these bonus calculations for us to make an assessment.

Also for two parts of the bonus you have stated you achieved over 100% but exceeding targets doesn't necessarily mean you would get a pro-rata bonus, it could be capped at a certain level. When you've calculated your own bonus for example on two of the four categories you have given yourself more than the proportion of the bonus that that makes up i.e. part B contributes 20% of the bonus but you've given yourself 20.4%.

I guess another question is what are these percentages a percentage of, is it a case of the overall bonus pool is calculated a X and then you get a bonus of X * (0.7 * 0.94 + 0.2 * 1.02 + 0.05 * 0.2 + 0.05 * 1.04).

I think the part that is really unclear is when you talk about a weighted scheme and 'kicking in' at 80% it really isn't clear what you mean by that. Are you saying that to get a bonus you have to score over 80% for each category and then bonus based on how much you exceed it by so in this case you got:

A = (94-80)/20 * 0.7 = 0.49
B = (102-80)/20 * 0.2 = 0.22
C = (20-80)/20 * 0.05 = -0.15 (presumably with a collar preventing it from going below 0)
D = (104-80)/20 * 0.05 = 0.06

Total = 77%

To be honest if I've understood correctly (which is a big assumption) this method seems fairer than your method which provides a bonus for mediocre performance e.g. imagine in Part A you only achieved 10% of your target you'd still be getting 7% of the bonus pool from that, they probably have a threshold set at 80% which is basically saying look if you aren't getting anywhere near your targets then you really don't deserve a bonus for that component of it.
 
So if you hit 50% of targets across the board and your company was close to folding you would still find it immoral if you weren't paid 50% of your full bonus? I would have though it was standard practice that bonuses only kick in once a certain threshold in performance is crossed. No bonus below 80% seems reasonable to me.
 
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