IT IS standard practice in the compensation packages provided to the management and rank and file of organizations to include bonuses apart from the contracted salaries and wages and other non-monetary benefits.
The greater bulk of these bonuses are related to performance. These provide incentives to achieve and even surpass the targets in the performance scorecard. The practice motivates, rewards and inspires the individual and organizational delivery of results.
The mechanism of performance-based incentives must, of course, be really correlated to actual performance and the benefit and resulting capacity to pay of the organization.
Likewise, it must also ensure that there is equity and proportionate allocation of the benefits throughout the organization, among the ranks and job classifications, and, ideally, in terms of contribution to results.
It must also be understood and accepted by every segment of the human resource affected both in terms of the policy, practice and execution.
It is, therefore, hard and complicated. And this is more so in terms of government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) which are owned by the people and serve the general public in terms of the services provided. This enlarges the stakeholders involved.
There are GOCCs which, by their inherent nature and function, are profi table and those which are loss-leaders and dependent on subsidies. This further complicates the structuring and application of the compensation package and the performance-based incentives.
For the private sector, the use of compensation and incentive packages is simpler. San Miguel Corporation, Ayala Land, BPI, Banco de Oro and the multinationals can and do provide very high compensation and bonuses in the millions. That is their call which is subject only to their owners decision in the light of their human resources support.
Ultimately, it is only subject to the dynamics of the market. For GOCCs, the Aquino administration has decided to create a Government Commission for GOCCs through R.A. No. 10149 to review and reorganize the corporations and fix the salaries, allowances, per diems and bonuses of board members.
It appears that this is President Aquino’s response as indicated in his first SONA wherein he denounced the excessive pay checks and lavish benefi ts of the executives of the MWSS. “…the MWSS board of trustees received P2.5 million annually apart from car benefits, technical assistance and loans… meetings got P14,000 and an annual grocery allowance of P80,000 each… midyear bonus, productivity bonus, anniversary bonus, yearend bonus, fi nancial assistance, …and a Christmas bonus. In the MWSS, (the average worker) gets the equivalent of over 30 months pay…”
Now, there is public outrage over the grant by the SSS in granting around a P1 million each to its board of trustees as performance bonuses. At the same time, it has increased the members’ monthly salary contribution from 10.4 to 11 per4cent.
The SSS board members also receive P40,000 per board meeting for a maximum two meetings a month and P20,000 per committee meeting for a maximum two meetings a month. That is P120,000 a month for four meetings. It is up to the SSS whether this is reasonable and moral in terms of its business and performance.
However, many of its members – the main stakeholders – are complaining that they are not getting efficient service. Now, according to Mr. Paolo Salvosa, spokesman of the GCG, the GCG has also approved the release of similar incentives to 19 other GOCCs for meeting their self-imposed targets for last year.
However, he could not recall who these other GOCCs are. He, however, defends the acts as being moral because “the GCG will not issue any such authorization if such bonus is immoral.” While refusing to comment on the morality of raising SSS premiums at the same time, he says, “…it is not the mandate of the GCG to tell the GOCCs how to run their business.”
Is it not clear to Mr. Salvosa that when the GCG approved the release of these bonuses they have in fact declared them as moral and in accordance with the mandates of good business practices?
Or is that outside their own mandate and competence? “Bonus” has always been a nice term for me. It has always meant a reward or benefit which is for excellent performance and results above and beyond what has been committed or expected. It has now like many terminologies in these times of inconsistencies lost its appeal.
I am now relegating it to the products of the ShoeMart Market wherein SM comes up with various products which are clones of the products they sell on their own shelves. SM places the original brand side by side with its own cloned duplicate, as its own house brand, “BONUS.” Or is it bogus for everyone, Totus Tuus?
