The fat years for employees in the automotive industry are over. Because the car business is no longer running, bonuses are being cut or canceled. The same applies to the tourism industry, which is almost at a standstill due to the travel restrictions due to Corona.

These payments are voluntary and one-time special payments by employers. Bonuses are sweets that employees have gotten used to, but are not entitled to. This special payment can exist, but does not have to be.

Insecure income planning It is different with bonuses that are part of the variable salary are. This is made up of two components: the fixed base salary and a mostly success-oriented bonus that is based on goals. These are agreed between employer and employee, so the employee is also entitled to this payment, which is usually linked to performance and success.

Sales can do that of the individual, a department or the entire company, also in combination or an individual achievement such as the introduction of a new technology. Performance and success are always decisive for these variable remuneration. If there is no economic success, this can lead to more or less noticeable wage losses. This uncertainty in income planning is one reason why variable salaries are declining.

On average 8000 Euro per year variable After evaluating around a quarter of a million data records, the compensation portal gehalt.de has calculated exclusively for heise online that every fifth employee in Germany has variable salary components on average 8. 000 receives euros per year. There are huge differences in the industries: While only around 7 percent of employees in the skilled trades receive success-related bonuses, in the semiconductor industry it is every second. Variable remuneration is traditionally widespread among executives and in the field.

According to the analysis, the proportion of employees who receive variable salaries has decreased slightly in the past year. “This development is in line with our expectations: the possible false incentives of variable remuneration penetrate the consciousness of employees”, says Philip Bierbach, managing director of gehalt.de. Flexible salary components can be a performance incentive, but the effect depends heavily on how they are used.

Reward corporate success instead of individual performance “Studies show that job satisfaction and emotional attachment to the company increase when variable remuneration is measured against the success of the company as a whole,” says Bierbach. However, if greater emphasis is placed on individual performance, overall job satisfaction and willingness to cooperate decrease. The prospect of a higher income is then no incentive for more performance. On the contrary: such variable salary components do more harm to the company than they benefit it.

Dirk Sliwka from the University of Cologne also sees a slight trend towards a decrease in the spread of variable remuneration systems. “It is often feared in companies – and often rightly so – that classic forms of variable remuneration can slow down agility,” says the professor of business administration and human resource management. If, for example, a bonus is linked to the fulfillment of annual targets, but the company’s targets change during the year, this link may be too rigid for the employee to receive a bonus.

“If, on the other hand, you want to continuously adjust goals, this leads to a high level of complexity and possible dissatisfaction on the part of the employees when combined with success payments,” says Sliwka. This is why individual goals and variable remuneration are increasingly being decoupled. The collective success decides about the variable bonus and not the personal one, the colleagues frustrated.

“Advantage of great simplicity” According to Sliwka, the majority of empirical studies show that money can generate greater incentives to work, especially for simple, clearly measurable jobs that require little intrinsic motivation. This is less clear with complex activities and high self-motivation. “We now have some findings that variable remuneration can damage companies,” says Sliwka. These are, for example, bonuses that reward low absenteeism but increase absenteeism, “because for many something that is taken for granted – I come to work when I am healthy – has become less natural than the bonus associated with it,” says the professor .

He does not assume that variable remuneration models displace the rigid ones, but believes in an opposing trend, “because fixed remuneration has the advantage of being extremely simple”. In his opinion, however, variable remuneration is gaining in importance where it uses the success of teams or the entire company as a basis for assessment.

Unpopular in technical professions In young companies there is more of a bonus for everyone, because Claudia Kimich, who coaches people for successful negotiation, also knows salary issues for individuals. “Young companies basically expect their employees to be more involved than in established companies,” explains Kimich. Variable salary components are widespread in sales because performance can be easily measured against sales. “The higher the salary, the higher the variable component is often, because managers have greater influence on a goal than normal employees can,” says Kimich. She advises managers who, with the necessary success, can triple their salary through bonuses.

However, in Kimich’s opinion, success-related bonuses are not fundamentally useful. Before entering into an agreement with your employer, she advises you to look carefully at how much you can contribute to success. “The smaller the impact, the less likely the premium.” Women and men in technical professions don’t really like this type of payment, Kimich knows from her 20 experience as a coach. “These two groups prefer the fixed salary because they know what to do for sure.” In these days full of uncertainty and worry about losing their job, a secure income counts more for most employees than a fictitious bonus.

(axk)