Bonus

[#1]

Should people be paid a bonus in addition to their wage ?
Seems to me the higher one is up the ladder the greater the chances of getting a bonus, irrespective of performance.

[#2]

I've only ever had two jobs where there was a bonus on offer. One was if you took less than 7 days sick in the year (hard to achieve in that line or work as it was all outdoors - imagine having a cold in winter) and the other supposedly paid £1k at the end of November for every member of staff that had been a good boy/girl (they never defined this 'goodness' though). I heard from several sources that this £1k was never actually paid to anyone despite being promised every year and that no-one actually got any form of bonus. Then the company started taking money out of my salary and sending emails admitting to various nasty things they were doing to me and I walked.
Both of these jobs were up the pay scale and nowhere near minimum wage jobs. Whilst the outdoor was was a bit crap the second one was just under £20k (the lower end of the semi decent pay scale). Never has one of my previous jobs ever paid any form of bonus.
One thing I've noticed though is that the higher up the pay scale you get the lazier you can be. I have absolutely no idea how that works but it seems the less you get paid the harder you have to graft for it. It's a really screwed up sense or morality.

[#3]

A company I worked for some 25 years ago had a rewally good scheme where all employees (subject to having been with the company at least a full year) could be paid a bonus which was a percentage (up to a maximum - 5% if I recall correclty) of their annual wage depending purely on the comany's profitability for the year, this was paid in the December wages so was a nice little Christmas extra on the occasions when it was paid.  After buying out another company profits slumped and I don't think thebonus was ever paid again.

[#4]

Have worked for at least 3 companies that have given bonuses. Some were yearly bonus paid at Christmas and were paid in confidence as the amount varied depending on the work you have done and you salary at the time. This was because the determination of the bonuses was done at the same time as pay review and a large pay increase normally meant a larger bonus as this was a way to back date a pay rise.
Another company just use a formula of percentage of profit given the total amount of bonus available then this was split as a percentage of salary and performance and paid at Christmas.
The last bonus scheme I was on paid every 6 months up to 5% of your salary depending on reaching personal and company targets, typically the bonuses paid was 4.0 to 4.5% of salary every 6 months. This bonus system I was more against as I believe that bonuses should be bias towards the lower paid employees as these did not get the same benefits (perks) as the higher paid. I have to add that I was in the higher paid bracket so it's not soar grapes on my part.   

[#5]

I always found the idea of an attendance bonus something of an oddity, getting something extra for actually turning up for work
Where I last worked we used to get an annual bonus but each few years it dwindled.....the last one I remember being an orange.
One of our Israeli suppliers sent us a large box of oranges which the MD handed out to each employee at the close of business for the Christmas holiday.

[#6]

I was lucky.  When I last worked for a company about 20 years ago I had a yearly meeting with one of the directors.  I was informed of my new salary for the forthcoming year and also told what bonus I was getting.  There was never any negotiating, I was simply informed.  I didn't mind this as the bonus was never less then £2k and often up to £5k. Most of my staff were also on a bonus which was directly linked to profitability.  We were a listed company so in addition we received a yearly allocation of shares.

[#7]

Quote from: artmo

When I last worked for a company about 30 years ago

Eh? How old are you then? lol

[#8]

Sorry Sprite meant to say 20 years ago.  Amended.

[#9]

Crafty dodge of the question there lol