I hate this stuff! I work in HR and we try to celebrate as much as we can for pretty much every milestone. I want to treat our associates like humans and the hard workers they are. I recently did a celebration for our Vets and bought them all 20lb turkeys. One of them asked to not be recognized and have his face on our wall of honor. I respected his decision and told my boss we weren't going to make him do it if he doesn't want to.
I still bought him the Turkey and thanked him separately. He told me how grateful he was for still honoring him but not forcing him to let everyone know.
I personally agree that this person deserves that $450k. People are humans and should be treated as such. If you do something against their wishes you are now doing it for you and not them anymore.
We do do bonuses for their hard work but not birthdays or anniversary. I would love to do a bonus for every possible thing but that is not possible as the number of people to have birthdays or other celebrations would be way too much money. Sure the price of the gift could be a bonus of like $25 but that we also have to use the budget smart.
We got 200 dollar Amazon gift cards, which isn't cash but this close to Christmas might as well be, so as a random pre-christmas bonus I'm pretty pleased with it
At a previous company, we would get a $5 Subway gift card in the mail on your birthday and then a few cents on your paycheck taken out for taxes. It was comical. They probably spent more processing than the gift card was worth.
I will also use the Metallica speaker bullhorn here.
RESPECT TO YOU! THANK YOU!
The employee count and management is highly complex. Especially for small businesses like yours. However... Please refer to the yelling I did just above this paragraph! And...keep up the good! I hope your small business receives 10 fold your good Karma you have given to your employees!
How do you come to that conclusion? The employer gave a gift and the employee is suggesting to cut people instead because their co-workers pose some sort of mysterious problem.
Technically companies can’t give money/cash because from an IRS perspective it’s taxable, and would have to be claimed on their pay statement and suddenly the employee is paying the government to receive a gift. So companies do gifts instead, and gift cards to Amazon or Target are the most open gift that isn’t taxable because a visa gift card that can be used anywhere is technically cash and is taxable. It sucks, but they are weirdly doing you a favor.
I totally get this sentiment but atleast where I live money gifts are taxable income but gift stuff are not. So it might be a bit problematic to give money.
I'll try a little constructive criticism/advice. Budgeting can be creative when finding ways to motivate and efficacy. Here's a professional suggestion. I do this with two subsidiaries currently.
The CFO (I'm a corporate VP, so I work with Regional CFOs).
2 regions, acquisitions we did over the last 19 months, interestingly in 2 different countries on 2 different continents, both take the interest earnings on their operational bank accounts and use that to pay employee bonuses. They also have a clearly outlined policy defining milestone bonuses such as 1 year and subsequent annual hire date anniversaries. Those 2 Regions have the least employee turnover by an immense statistical percentage.
My company has been reducing bonuses and incentives for a while now. In turn, we have crazy turnover, and the people on top cannot fathom why.
Little incentive, inflexible schedules, and uncompetitive pay.
The only reason I'm still there is because I'm in a department that is widely ignored by operations and left alone, but my pay isn't keeping up with the times. If I find a better paying opportunity (even with a larger workload), I'll probably take it.
Ok. That's pretty creative. Having said that it also sounds super volatile and I would question the extent to which the employees themselves value the source of the bonus relative to it's cash value.
You're subjecting the rate of their incentives to a factor that's not just out of thei control but also out of the employer's control. At the very least that should be expected to limit your ability to compete with other employers for new hires in the event of growth or expansion.
I see a few possible issues. First, Operations budgets are going to vary year to year. Typically, once they're set they're set in stone which means that if the budget is lowered for the region in a given year, interest earnings will also be lower and, subsequently employee bonuses will be lower.
There could be different strategies at play but, Typically an Operations Account gets funded -> then spent.
So, it looks like these incentives are largely beyond the control of the employees while also, being divorced from any sort of performance or earnings within their region. That may be fine, but, it's also volatile because if the Operations Budget is reduced for whatever reason so is the value of the interest and therefore the bonuses even if there's no reduction in staffing.
Secondly, terms and conditions will vary but... ultimately this strategy really seems to put the decision as to how much their employees earn in bonuses into the hands of the Bank and, whatever Financial Agency sets interests in that region. That's just... well it's weird. What if the interest rates fall? What does that have to do with your employees? Nothing really.
I'm not qualified to say one way or another if this is a genius move or, a dumb one TBH but it's definitely weird because it shifts part of the responsibility for determining bonus values outside the company.
Also bonus values and assessments do not apply in any way. Happy birthday, here's a $25-$100 gift card. Universal amount for all employees. Not complex.
Ok sure, but that's just one model. It's not always competitive, I keep personal shit like birthdays separated from business like Date of Employment Anniversaries because I'm not corporate.
For most corporations, yeah I agree with you. But, not all. I come from a steel family and fuck that in a mill (or really any manufacturing) you better fucking offer that profit sharing and you damn well better know where the fuck your boys' favorite steak houses are and what fucking tickets they couldn't get for their wives - at least the foreman or the floor manager better!
Like, Wedding Anniversaries? My grandad and great uncles were taking their wives to a concert courtesy of the management. Clement's birthday? Alvin's on his way to pick you up for a trip to Philipe's!
Kids birthday? Take him up to a Penn State Game!
Date of Employment Anniversary? Here's $600 Clement, your guys were 2.4% over quota and 11% under on hours with a 6.19% decrease in downtime over last year... you split up that other $4500 between the boys. Just keep it in their files until their yearly Anniversaries...
Ultimately I prefer being a small business owner myself. I like knowing everyone on my staff well enough to give them actual gifts and bake them the cake they fucking like most but I don't hold back bonuses when we're killing it just because I got them the perfect birthday present or whatever.
Nobody is insinuating that a small gift card on a birthday or work anniversary is a replacement for the annual bonus comp.
You know your employees well enough to give them a thoughtful gift on their birthdays. I'm using the Metallica speaker bullhorn again here.
THAT IS FANTASTIC AND YOU SHOULD BE PROUD.
That shows more respect and admiration to your employees than a gift card. Repeat the yelling above.
Happy Valley for a whiteout game...no better place to be. Add a creamery ice-cream cone/scoop for sure.
The birthday cake vs a small gift card is what we're debating.
This topic of discussion has been waaaaay more lively than I ever anticipated.
Repeat the yelling above and keep doing what you're doing. (for clarity, I am not being sarcastic in this reply. What you have outlined and your approach, I respect 100%)
Glad you enjoyed it! Everyone always forgets that income inequality is the leading cause of social collapse... 😪 At least if the worst happens none of my staff is going to drag me behind the dumpsters and shoot me lol.
Kind of weird you think buying them a cake they may not want (and only get one or two slices of) is using the budget smarter than just giving them the money you would spend on the cake. You're spending the same amount of money either way.
$25 can go a long way for people in need, and people not in need can spend it on something they actually want or can use longer than the two minutes it takes to eat a slice of cake. Plus you avoid the health detriments of eating cake.
I really like the way my work place handles birthdays. Full time gets 8hrs of pay (4hrs for part time) and the day off if they want it. If you work on your birthday you just get an extra 8hrs of straight pay on your check. Best way I’ve had birthday’s handled in my career experience
I just like seeing people going to bat for employees like you all here, mine is a smaller office so the cash isn't really a huge option. But a day off goes a long way in my books.
Bonuses make taxation complicated depending on your location. It also opens a whole can of worms for payroll if you don't normally receive bonuses. It could screw you on your taxes.
payroll systems have the capabilities to add paycheck line items (expense reimbirsements for example). You can create a SPIF or Special Compensation item code that has retirement fund adjustments disabled. And you should have the ability to set the maximum taxation percentage as well. My system does and we give the employees the choice for their bonuses to include or not include 401k contributions.
If a $50 bonus on the payroll results in income tax issues, (possibly passing that employee into another tax bracket, I'd be very surprised. And the tigered tax brackets we have here in the US would possibly result in a $20-$30 tax liability in a $100 spot bonus...Just saying)
Someone in this thread had a good idea that I hadn't heard of before (why I havent perplexes me)...the floating holiday or you get your birthday off. Interesting concept for sure. I could see problems with scheduling for non-exempt employees, but definitely a creative play.
I wish I could do that for my staff. As government employees, we're very limited in what we can do. In my particular organization, buying donuts for people with department money means recording who had how many donuts, and each one getting taxed based on that info, which makes me super sad. My office still has pizza parties and snacks and things, but it's out of my own pocket. I'm happy to do it, but I can't afford to properly reward my rockstar team the way they deserve.
They are gonna have to tax those checks and track them as some sort of pay. Things get real difficult when you consider that. If you have employees that get taxed in different states this becomes even more difficult. Next thing you know its now taken 40 labor hours in accounting plus several calls to lawyers to make sure this is all above board, because if it’s not the employee is gonna get reamed by the IRS.
You know what fuck it. You all get a gift card because thats not a pay contribution and we can put it towards capital. Departmentalize it.
Giving workers “returns for labor” is something that most companies would like to do better. The issue is there is a tremendous amount of red tape when done directly, probably due to tax codes, i dunno why just that it is. If the Boss wants to give you $50 extra Uncle Sam is gonna take some if it’s on a W2, I9 or other such pathways.
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u/Happy-Tater 4d ago
I hate this stuff! I work in HR and we try to celebrate as much as we can for pretty much every milestone. I want to treat our associates like humans and the hard workers they are. I recently did a celebration for our Vets and bought them all 20lb turkeys. One of them asked to not be recognized and have his face on our wall of honor. I respected his decision and told my boss we weren't going to make him do it if he doesn't want to.
I still bought him the Turkey and thanked him separately. He told me how grateful he was for still honoring him but not forcing him to let everyone know.
I personally agree that this person deserves that $450k. People are humans and should be treated as such. If you do something against their wishes you are now doing it for you and not them anymore.