My employer has told everyone in the office they will be “rewarded” with a bonus this year due to “putting in the extra yards” during covid. It was emphasised that this is a discretionary amount & isn’t to be discussed amongst other employees. This tells me favoured employees will benefit & others not treated equally. My question is… is this legal?
Employer Is Giving Discretionary Bonuses
Mary Poppins on 19/12/2020 - 00:03
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Organisations don't want you talking to your colleagues because pay and bonuses are partly allocated on personality. They underpay people that are less likely to walk or have less confrontational personalities. I've been in meetings with execs who have said "That guy is a stayer, he wont leave so we don't have to worry too much about a pay rise"
This is one of the reasons for the gender pay gap. Men are on average more ruthless in negotiating pay, it's a persojnality trait linked to gender. If people knew what everyone else was earning you would just point to the hardest negotiator in the team and say "I'll have what he / she is having". Divide and conquer
How many years have you working OP?
This is sort of the question where I thought the answer to whether it was legal would be pretty obvious.If you feel you're being unfairly discriminated or performance ranked then better lawyer up like the other guy? (… or just get a new job?)
Maybe some people work harder than you?
I have worked for many large multi-national mining/engineering/oil&gas companies on both consulting and owner's sides. Like anything it's a bell curve normal distribution. The majority of people are paid about the same given their work experience, education and skills, however there are always outliers - ones who are over-paid and ones who are under-paid.
What about the Pareto Principal?
Where roughly 20% of the staff are generating 80% of the work.Depends on the project, client, industry etc etc, but I find most of the time especially post GFC owner's and consultants organizations are running leaner and more efficiently. Public services like utilities and city councils are still quite bad: 20% staff generating 80% of the work. Private sector are much more efficient. I'm quite privileged in the sense that my role allows me to see individual's pay rates, sell rates, project profitability, cash flow and so on.
My last company had middle managers who were getting massive share bonuses and big pay increases for doing jack shit. Overseeing employees was more micromanagement and management were useless and only interested in protecting their cushy $$$ salaries.
Gee, sounds like the company I work for lol
medtech?
Yes they can do this.
Yes you can talk about what you earn or the bonuses you get.
The only reason businesses tell you not to is because they don't want to deal with the "I work twice as hard as X, why don't you pay me at least what he's earning?"
Check your employment agreement before discussing with anyone. Many businesses will include clauses that can result in it being a breach of company policy to discuss.
- Employer decides to give out a discretionary bonus for a hard year of work
- Asks not to be discussed, which they are entirely and legally allowed to do
- Rush to raise topic on ozbargain
- Profit?
I wouldn't take it too personally if some people get higher bonuses than you, I've found that sometimes the best workers are the least appreciated.
I worked in a retail store where a guy who sold lots of extended warranties and unnecessary accessories by lying to customers was rewarded, and others who sold honestly were not.
In the company's eyes the guy selling the extended warranty and upselling accessories is doing a better job as they're making more profit from the same number of sales.
In some retail environments they are a requirement for getting ANY bonus. You could sell 20x more TVs than any other salesperson, but unless 30% (just an example) of them had surge protection added and 10% had warranty, then you don't get your commission.
That's often why places like JB will "throw in" 1 year protection (but discount the main item by the price of the warranty)
Yeah that's right, I question whether that makes them a better worker though, just one that makes more profit.
Well the whole point of a business is to make a profit, otherwise how do you expect them to pay the wages?
How do people not realise that all bonuses are discretionary in the private sector? Some workplaces might want to keep it even, but very often they'll say you are getting similar bonuses when in fact you are not.
I give my Barista a 30c performance bonus
Its discretionary (title says it all). Get over it.
Bonuses should ONLY be given to those that have worked hard or have gone above and beyond. Why should bonuses be equal for everyone? I don't reward my lazy staff with a bonus, why would I? I only reward people who really care, who try hard and who I want to show my appreciation for.
Employer Is Giving Discretionary Bonuses
Good on him.
Most people I know aren't getting bonuses this year…
Definitely legal, and definitely normal in a lot of companies especially if there's not distinctive pay band system in place.
Can you imagine pay being made public? The tension it causes would be terrible for morale.
There's a lot of assumptions with pay. People assume the longer you've been there, you automatically go up the pay scale, but what if your output is lower? People assume that your output is higher, therefore you have higher pay, but what if your quality of work is lower? People assume that you've completed all your work, but what if others also contribute to tasks that aren't in your job description?
There's many, many aspects to pay, and sometimes, we just really need that person. They can be like anaesthetists where they do the sudoku for 90% of their time in the operating theatre, but that 10% is where their high pay comes into. They're responsible for resolving crisis, and that's why they have that high pay.
Natural Aussie behaviour, .. gets discretionary bonus and instead of being grateful and evaluating whether this is a good reward for their personal effort/performance .. goes and worries about what everyone else is getting as someone may be getting more for doing less in their opinion.
Minor adjustment - Typical first world entitled behavior. Sadly not excusive here.
This is legal and fair.
It allows the employer to reward the staff they wish to retain without rewarding staff considered a burden.there are lots of considerations when giving a discretionary bonus. Not knowing what industry you are in and what you do, imagine if your performance or production is twice as your colleague, yet you get the same amount of bonus as them, would you feel fair?
Favoured employees or employees that have contributed more than others?!
There’s no way I’d give a bigger bonus to the worker who bludges than to the other works their arse off.Why not just be grateful that you’re getting something extra?! Especially when there are thousands that have lost their jobs…
A bit like discretionary salary reviews or discretionary redundancies or discretionary interviews before you get a job. Maybe you fancy the writings of Karl Marx?
uh huh, see how well the Soviet Union turned out… oh… what USSR…
Yes, it's legal. Welcome to capitalism.
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My work did that, they gave most people that work in Customer Service & Business Administration a $1000 bonus…. except for me
Same 'discretionary' information, but there's always at least one that doesn't keep their mouth shut