What is a bonus?

I've worked at several companies in my career as a database programmer.  I've seen a lot of different compensation plans and I've seen some companies that even offer bonuses.  The word bonus brings to mind fantastic sums of extra money showered upon employees of a successful company.  A deserving tribute to the people that made the company so profitable.  I've found that Bonuses should be either one of two things:

1.  A bonus should be a distribution of excess wealth to the employees as a gift.  The employees work for the pay they are given and that pay is what they earn.  A bonus should happen when the company makes so much money that they would like to share that wealth with the employees.  It should always be a surprise and not expected.

2.  A bonus should be compensation for extra effort worked on a temporary project or position that requires more than standard work hours.  Understanding this, the company sets forth what the compensation will be and then the employee, understanding this, will then do that extra work required to achieve that bonus.  This should happen rarely.  

There are no other ways a bonus should happen.  I have seen the word BONUS used as a carrot to dangle in front of hopeful employees for extra work only to have the terms so vaguely defined that by the time a bonus is paid, it is always at best a disappointment and usually an insult.  Those bonuses are the most offensive because even the dumbest employee you have is capable of dividing the hours spent on this extra project into the bonus received to come to a bottom line that is obviously less than what anyone at the company make hourly.

Many companies believe it's their job to be paternalistic with their employees and will offer a bonus as an incentive that can only be achieved through participation in some kind of vapid series of goals.  The goals don't have much to do with the business other than they want to give managers something to do.  Bonus goals tend to be a waste of time both on the part of the company as well as the employee at best.  These goal based evaluation bonuses are probably the biggest example of executives that have way too much spare time on their hands and a company that has become so successful that it has lost touch with the reasons for it's success.  The amount of productive time used to get these bonuses coupled with the obnoxious evangelizing about the companies 'pillars of effectiveness' or 'cornerstones of achievement'  you can build your own  company catchphrase pretty easily.  Just start with some kind of a structure and link it to an adjective usually found in the most current business self help book.  lets try one.  Cinder-blocks of Awareness.  if your company goals are centered around some kind of popular movement.  Door shims of profitability.  You can sit around and make these up all day.  Your company didn't.  they took it from a business self help book and extrapolated once and boom!  instant slogan.  

If a company wants to give bonuses, they should just do it.  Quit believing that every move you make has to have some deeper cosmic significance.  Quit believing your employees should want to stay at work for one moment longer than they are required to.  Instead, start believing that your employees are human and deserve the same respect for their time that you believe your company deserves.  Don't treat your employees like trained dogs to be given a treat for jumping through enough brightly colored hoops.  Your employees will never say it to your face (or most of them won't) but the very MOMENT they don't have to do these goals, they wont and they won't feel bad at all about it.  Every moment they spend working on making something fit your 'Stanchions of Success'.  Besides, that bonus money will be forgotten by the next month.