For the sake of anonymity, I’m keeping this very vague, but for context, I work for a healthcare company on the patient-facing side of things.
For the past 2 years of the hell that is covid, corporate has very rarely given us raises, bonuses, or even appropriate staffing to manage the overburden that’s come from the pandemic.
Similar companies/positions around us earn much more, so obviously, their employee retention has dropped significantly and many employees are leaving, largely due to the severe short staffing as well. So they released a stay bonus— if you sign a contract to stay employed at the company for 6 more months, you receive a bonus, and if you quit during that time period, you have to pay back the gross amount. Not really what we’ve asked for, but okay.
Essentially, nearly half of the company didn’t sign up for the bonus by the time the deadline was reached. For one, the bonuses offered to per diem and part time workers wasn’t even worth it, and for another… a lot of the company is searching for other jobs.
So they released another bonus. Because of how few of us signed the first one, however, they added a new contingency.
If we reach a certain percentage of the company signing on, those who already signed for the first bonus get ANOTHER bonus. The higher the percentage, the more the additional bonus is. So their goal is for other employees to peer pressure everyone who didn’t sign on into doing so, thus ensuring that more people are locked into staying the company.
Unsure if it’s even legal, but corporate doesn’t care. They’ll do anything except give us the raises we deserve, and then they wonder why everyone is leaving the company.