By Editor’s Note: Here’s one of my most popular holiday classics. This one is from back in December 2018.
I’VE HAD TO WORK THROUGH so many holiday seasons that I feel a little like Clark Griswold.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, the character should.
It’s the role Chevy Chase played numerous times, but most memorably, in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
One thread throughout the movie was how Clark was anxiously waiting to hear how large his Christmas Bonus was going to be because he had big plans for all the things he could do with it.
You know how that turned out.
Clark’s long-awaited “bonus” turned out to be a one-year membership in the Jelly of the Month Club. He was so enraged that he inspired one of his relatives to kidnap Clark’s boss, bringing him back to the Griswold Christmas gathering. That’s where Clark berated him for mistreating all his employees by letting them believe they were actually going to get something nice for all the hard work they did during the year.
Unfortunately, “gifts” like that are not all that uncommon when it comes to Christmas Bonuses.
Half of employees don’t get a bonus
A FEW YEAR’S BACK, there was a survey commissioned by Spherion Staffing Services that found that 41 percent of employees felt that the top company perk was a “holiday bonus.”
However, the survey also found that “46 percent of respondents said their company does not give holiday bonuses or any other monetary gifts during the holidays.”
Although it’s been a while since I received a holiday bonus, the ones I have gotten over the years run the gamut from the really great to something akin to the Jelly of the Month Club.
Worst bonus? A lambskin fanny pack
MY ALL-TIME WORST BONUS came the year that the miserly Scrooge I worked for — who usually gave employees some cheap desk item at Christmas — decided to do something different.
How different, you might ask? Well, would you believe he gave everyone in the company … a lambskin fanny pack?
I don’t think there was anyone who was happy with this remarkable Christmas “Bonus,” and one of the female sales directors memorably told everyone, “There’s no way in hell I’m going to put that thing around MY fanny!!!”
Once the full impact of this unusual gift sunk in, everybody in the company seemed to have the same thought: Where did this come from … and can we take it back?
Well, the lambskin fanny packs came from The Sharper Image back when they still had stores, and a couple of guys who worked for me tried to return their “bonuses” to Sharper Image and found out two things:
- The fanny packs were only worth $17 in Sharper Image credit; and,
- The local Sharper Image stores were so overwhelmed with returns of these “bonuses” that they weren’t taking any more back.
Yes, we were all stuck with our lambskin fanny packs.
So much for a holiday bonus that makes employees feel that they’re really appreciated. It’s the kind of gesture Clark Griswold could identify with.
One CEO’s very Grinch-like decision
AS BAD AS THE FANNY PACK bonus” was, the most Scrooge-like holiday behavior came one year when I was working for a Midwest-based family run company that had given every single employee a generous and wonderful holiday gift for more than 60 years — an extra paycheck at Christmas time.
Since we were all paid twice a month, that meant that every person in the organization got an extra half month’s pay during the Holiday Season.
It was an incredibly thoughtful gesture that spoke to the family values the company had espoused since its founding, and it became something that everyone in the company had come to count on during the Holiday season.
But when the financial crisis hit in September 2008, causing the collapse of Lehman Brothers and pushing America into the Great Recession, that wonderful extra holiday paycheck my fellow employees had all come to rely on came to an abrupt and untimely end.
Oh, and everybody took a 10 percent end-of-the-year pay cut, too.
Even Clark Griswold’s sorry boss couldn’t top a Christmas gesture like THAT.
Hearing about it through the grapevine
MOST EMPLOYEES WERE plugged in enough to understand the financial distress the company was in. Yes, extreme measures had to be taken, but at the heart of the problem was the ham-handed way the decision was communicated to everyone.
I had long maintained that the company couldn’t cut the bonus without giving managers lots of lead time to explain and manage the decision, but that’s not how it went.
When the financial crisis hit, the CEO just decided to kill the bonus and cut everyone’s pay with no warning or discussion. Senior managers like me first heard about it the way everybody else did — through the company grapevine.
Needless to say, telling employees they were losing their extra holiday paycheck and ALSO getting 10 percent of their pay cut was akin to the Grinch stealing all the Christmas presents of everyone in Who-ville.
The CEO was totally oblivious to the impact his decision would have on the company workforce, and his inability to do anything to help managers handle the situation only made it worse.
It’s boss behavior like this that drove Clark Griswold over the edge.
Here’s how to make bonuses work
HERE’S MY TAKE: I have long thought that a bad Christmas Bonus is worse than no bonus at all. Your culture, engagement, and overall morale will take a big hit if employees are led to believe, as Clark Griswold was, that they’re getting a nice bonus only to find they’re not getting much, if anything, at all.
By the way, that Spherion Staffing Services survey also found that for those employees who actually get a holiday bonus, “the majority receive less than $500.”
That’s right; even when companies DO give a cash bonus, they tend to give a fairly modest amount.
So, what do we do about holiday bonuses to avoid having employees end up like Clark Griswold — angry and pissed off at “the most wonderful time of the year?”
Author Jeff Hyman made the case that “the holiday bonus is a tradition that deserves to end.”
His reason?
“Paying a fixed year-end bonus in today’s business world – where the quality of your workforce is the No. 1 competitive differentiator – makes no sense. In a misguided effort to keep the peace and show workers they care, many employers spread the bonus money around in equal amounts to all employees (either in dollars or in a flat percentage of their salaries).”
His solution?
“A far better approach is to tie compensation to performance and to allocate a disproportionate percentage of that capital to reward your best people. … The point of your bonus plan should be to foster a workplace environment where exceptional performance is expected and rewarded, and where sub par performance is neither tolerated nor subsidized.”
A solution Clark Griswold would approve of
HERE’S THE BEST PART of Hyman’s proposal:
“A hallmark of a well-conceived bonus plan is that it encourages rock star employees to stay at your company when the headhunters call and it helps you to recruit top people from other organizations.”
This isn’t a bad idea, and I’m guessing that those employees you most want to benefit from a bonus will probably embrace it as well.
As Hyman adds:
“Ultimately, replacing a holiday bonus with a performance-based plan is a great gift to your employees. Next year, your strongest employees will give thanks for it.”
Amen to that. I’m guessing that Clark Griswold would probably approve too.
