A Third of Employers Give Bonuses to the Poorest Performers
Survey shows an additional 56 percent of workers met but failed to exceed expectations. Plenty of bonus money for them, too.
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For the fifth year in a row, bonus payouts will fall short of what employers had budgeted for, according to a Towers Watson survey of 170 large and midsize U.S. employers. The 2015 projected bonus funding for companies is, on average, 89 percent of the performance target. That's down from 93 percent last year.
But here's the thing: Towers Watson says "three in ten employers still plan to give bonuses to workers who failed to meet performance expectations." That is the highest percentage since 2007 and a jump from last year's 28 percent.