Remember the old adage, money doesn’t buy happiness? Turns out that’s only partly true as several studies (including our year survey and this recent Dice Report) report that salary and bonuses directly correlate with overall job satisfaction.
Bonuses appear to have a significant impact on job happiness. Although only 37% of tech professionals received a bonus this past year, 60% reported being happy with their current compensation. That’s compared to an only 48% happiness for those that didn’t receive a bonus.
However, although bonuses may make your team happy, it only helps a little when it comes to retention with 35% of bonus-receiving tech professionals that anticipate leaving their employers vs 38% of non-bonus receiving tech professionals that plan to leave.
Putting in it perspective, if you have a team of 100 and you lose 38 employees vs 35, that’s the equivalent of an extra 60K+ in internal or external costs in replacing that talent. Or, $600/person in a holiday bonus. This isn’t even taking into account the time and effort it takes in bringing a new person up to speed.
It might be time to consider adding a bonus into your overall tech talent retention plan.
