Will you get a bonus for Christmas?
When you are saying your goodbyes as your office wraps up for another year, will you be leaving empty-handed?
Or are you likely to go home with a bonus in your pocket?
Professor Jim Arrowsmith, from the school of management at Massey University, said Christmas bonuses and end-ofyear social events were probably even more important in the current labour market and given cost-of-living pressures.
Businesses might use them to recognise the increased workloads some workers had shouldered due to labour shortages, higher turnover, and post-Covid stress.
‘‘Though many employers are also facing big cost increases so are in a bind.’’
Small firms might do something informally, while big companies might put the celebration on hold and tell staff that they needed to ‘‘pull together’’ for now.
What sector the company was in also might affect what staff received, he said.
Banks and supermarkets had strong profits this year, while other organisations were struggling. The universities had two years of no international students, he said.
Arrowsmith said businesses would need to be wary of changing incentives that staff were used to. ‘‘Reducing or withdrawing such benefits, if they have always been there, could be very negative in terms of the ‘psychological contract’, especially given the cost of living and workloads,’’ he said.
‘‘Businesses look at ability to pay whereas employees evaluate pay not just in monetary terms but in relation to ‘fairness’.’’