Share bonuses equally among all company staff
DESPITE comments by Duncan Collins [“Bonuses are not public enemy no 1”, October 3], there is a problem with the bonus culture.
Last year, people on a salary of £4 million a year got an average pay rise of 11 per cent; those on about £20,000 got about 2.2 per cent.
Many of the richest people also got bonuses, even when their companies were doing badly, as in the case of Thomas Cook. If there is to be a fair system of bonuses, why not divide the profits available by the number of staff? Full-time staff would then get the same bonus, but the poorest-paid would benefit more, rather than the richest.
Alternatively, if the highest-paid workers are rewarded when a company does well, surely they are also responsible for a failing company and should then take a pay cut. Jonathan Wright
Dear Jonathan,
THERE are clearly problems with pay disparity between chief executives and the lowest paid workers in this country. The first week of January is never over before a swathe of headlines rage that the boss class have already earned more than the rest of us will in a year.
Your first suggestion is essentially the John Lewis model. Having stood with its shopfloor staff in the Oxford Street store when the percentage bonus number is unveiled each year, I can attest to the buzz a cash injection for employees gives. But now that the High Street grande dame is cutting its payout to the lowest level since the Fifties, morale and productivity are likely to be affected. If you’re used to a bit extra at the end of the year, it hurts when it doesn’t come. As for pay cuts, again it’s likely to affect productivity but a freeze or foregoing a bonus feels fair.
What’s interesting is how bonuses and high pay are not always top of employee wish lists. In London there’s a fight for graduate talent between financial services firms punting big money but long hours, and tech companies offering healthy salaries, flexibility and ping pong matches on Tuesday afternoons. Bonus Britain is changing.
Alex