Opinion | Bonuses linked to exercise and BMI are a step too far

“A company can last long when its employees are healthy,” said Lin Zhiyong, the company’s chairman, who is an avid mountain climber and who reached the summit of Mount Everest twice according to his WeChat account.

This has triggered debate on social media. While some admired the company for considering the well-being of employees to be critical to its growth, others saw it as controlling and even interfering with people’s personal freedoms and choices.

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Double amputee reaches top of Mount Everest in historic first

Double amputee reaches top of Mount Everest in historic first

Though Kamath said it was a “fun health programme” while announcing it on social media, the move came in for criticism. It was seen as body shaming, not to mention alienating for team members who were pregnant or battling weight gain as a result of genuine medical issues.

That’s because dangling this kind of carrot in front of employees only succeeds in achieving temporary compliance. It doesn’t provide the long-term commitment that is required for people to change entrenched bad habits. Worse still, while many of these measures seem well-meaning, they’re actively doing harm by promoting habits that are based on a lack of understanding of what constitutes good health.

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However, not all performance incentives are as quirky and controversial as these. Many are rather straightforward – cold, hard cash tied to increasing the company’s own bottom line. The logic is that if an employee works hard to help a company grow, they deserve to profit from that growth as well. In recent years, this traditional carrot-and-stick approach has also come under scrutiny.

It was later revealed that company’s work culture – particularly the way it motivated employees and its highly specific performance-based incentives – played a major role in setting the stage for its fraudulent accounting, one in a series of financial crimes that felled the company.

While bonuses might encourage small bursts of success in the short term, this is merely an illusion. It can be disastrous if employees prioritise achieving these goals over long -term outcomes. It doesn’t help that year-end bonuses have morphed into wildly celebratory events, with some over-the-top antics becoming viral spectacles.

However, the pandemic and the great attrition that came with it have shown many a corporate head that money alone can’t buy an employee’s loyalty. Studies have found that non-financial benefits can be powerful motivators, too, especially when employees feel more valued throughout the year as a result.

A better work environment, better training, more respect at the workplace, a recognition of employees’ efforts and revenue-sharing models can be just as empowering. They are a powerful reminder that a company’s growth is not just linked to rapidly rising salaries and fancy bonuses but also to lasting satisfaction.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, southern India