Are your staff bonus schemes encouraging the behaviour your organisation actually needs?

Do they help people work together, share knowledge and do the right thing for clients? Or do they quietly encourage people to protect their own targets, clients and income?

It’s worth asking.

Most of the businesses I work with pay an annual bonus, and some pay sales commission too. On the face of it, that seems entirely sensible. Work hard. Perform well. Receive a financial reward. Everyone wins.

Or do they?

I’ve worked with many leadership teams who say they want more collaboration. They want people to share opportunities, introduce colleagues to clients and take collective responsibility for results.

Yet their reward system tells people something quite different.

Individual targets are measured. Individual billings are celebrated. Individual bonuses are paid.

It shouldn’t surprise us when people then behave like individuals.

Every reward system creates a culture

Leaders sometimes think of bonuses as simply a way of paying people.

They’re not.

Your reward system is one of the clearest cultural signals in the organisation. It tells people what success looks like, what matters most and where they should focus their attention.

It influences who shares information, who asks for help, who introduces colleagues to clients and who quietly keeps opportunities to themselves.

If your staff bonus scheme depends primarily on personal sales, billings or client ownership, why would someone willingly hand work to somebody else?

Why introduce another department to their client?

Why spend time coaching a colleague when they could be generating income that counts towards their own target?

This doesn’t necessarily mean people are selfish. It means they’re responding rationally to the system around them.

The system is rewarding individual success, so people optimise for individual success.

That may have been exactly what you needed when the business was smaller. It may now be holding you back.

Why growing professional services firms develop silos

This problem is particularly common in growing professional services firms.

In the early days, individual performance often drives growth. Entrepreneurial people build relationships, win work and develop loyal clients. A commission or bonus linked to personal achievement can make perfect sense.

But then the business grows.

Clients need expertise from different disciplines. Projects become more complex. The founder can no longer be involved in every decision. Leadership becomes shared rather than founder-led.

The organisation has entered a new stage of maturity, but the reward system often remains exactly the same.

And what happens?

Departments become silos. Cross-referrals dry up. People protect “their” clients rather than acting in the best interests of the whole business. Senior people become reluctant to delegate because they don’t want their performance – or their income – to suffer.

You can end up with several small businesses competing inside one larger business.

That’s expensive. It creates duplication, frustration and missed opportunities. It also gives clients an inconsistent experience, because their relationship with the firm depends too heavily on one individual.

The irony is that the very people who helped build the business can become protective of the territory they created.

They may not intend to block collaboration. They may simply feel that sharing a client means sharing credit, income or influence.

The reward system has made the client feel like property.

The limits of financial incentives

Let me be clear: fair pay matters.

People have mortgages, families and financial responsibilities. Nobody should be expected to work harder, take on more responsibility or deliver better results without appropriate recognition.

But money isn’t the whole story.

Once people feel fairly rewarded, increasing financial incentives doesn’t necessarily produce greater motivation – particularly in professional, knowledge-based work.

People also want to do work they can be proud of. They want to solve problems, develop expertise, help clients and work with colleagues they respect.

They want to feel that their contribution matters.

An excessive focus on financial reward can gradually crowd out those other sources of motivation. If every conversation becomes about this year’s bonus, what happens to professional pride?

What happens to curiosity?

What happens to the satisfaction of helping a colleague succeed or developing the next generation of leaders?

These things don’t disappear overnight. They simply become less important because the organisation has taught people to focus elsewhere.

This is where an abundance-based approach can be helpful. There is more than one route to success. One person helping another does not have to mean losing out. A strong team can create more value, better client outcomes and greater long-term opportunity for everyone.

That is the culture many leaders say they want.

The question is whether their staff bonus schemes make it possible.

What does your reward system say about your values?

Your stated values might include teamwork, client service, learning and shared accountability.

But people will pay more attention to what gets rewarded than what gets printed on a wall.

If someone who hoards clients and refuses to share knowledge receives the highest bonus, people notice.

If a brilliant individual performer is allowed to damage relationships, undermine colleagues or avoid mentoring because they bring in revenue, people notice.

If the person who quietly improves systems, supports others and protects client relationships receives little recognition because those contributions are not in the formula, people notice that too.

Culture is not what you say you value. It is what happens repeatedly, especially when there is pressure.

Your reward system is part of that everyday reality.

So ask yourself:

• What behaviour earns the biggest rewards here?
• Can someone earn a top bonus while refusing to collaborate?
• Are people rewarded for profitable work, or simply for generating revenue?
• Does the scheme recognise client outcomes and long-term relationships?
• Are mentoring, knowledge-sharing and capability-building visible?
• Does the system encourage people to think beyond their own desk?

The answers may be uncomfortable. That’s useful information.

Reward the organisation you want to become

I’m not suggesting you abolish bonuses.

For many businesses, they remain an important part of total reward. The issue is not whether you pay a bonus. The issue is what the bonus is designed to produce.

If you want collaboration, recognise collaboration.

If you want knowledge-sharing, make it visible in how success is measured.

If you want leaders who develop other people rather than rescuing them, reward them for building capability – not simply for hitting their own numbers.

If you want collective accountability, make sure people have a meaningful stake in the success of the wider team.

This doesn’t mean every reward has to be equal. Fairness does not always mean sameness. Different roles carry different responsibilities, and individual contribution still matters.

But individual contribution should sit alongside team and organisational outcomes.

For example, you might consider a more balanced approach that includes:

• Individual objectives linked to quality, expertise and agreed responsibilities.
• Team measures linked to client satisfaction, delivery and profitability.
• Recognition for cross-team work and successful referrals.
• Credits for mentoring, coaching and developing colleagues.
• Rewards linked to long-term client relationships rather than one-off sales.
• Measures that consider margin and delivery quality, not just top-line revenue.

The right balance will depend on your organisation. There is no magic formula that works everywhere (if only it were that simple!).

But the principle is straightforward: reward the behaviour you want repeated.

Don’t reward work that creates problems later

One of the biggest weaknesses in many commission structures is that they reward the beginning of the process but ignore what happens afterwards.

Someone wins a piece of work. They receive credit. The delivery team inherits an unrealistic brief, a heavily discounted project or a client who has been promised something the business cannot deliver profitably.

The originator gets the reward. Somebody else gets the problem.

That is not a healthy incentive.

A better approach considers the whole client journey. Was the work profitable? Was it delivered well? Did the client receive the promised outcome? Did the originator involve the right people early enough?

This shifts the conversation from “Who brought in the work?” to “How did we create value together?”

That is a much more useful question.

It also makes it easier for people to listen to their gut. If a proposed project feels wrong, they should be able to raise concerns without worrying that they are putting someone else’s bonus at risk.

How to review your staff bonus schemes

If you think your reward system may be producing the wrong behaviour, don’t start by rewriting the formula.

Start by understanding what is happening now.

Speak to people across the organisation. Ask them:

• What behaviour does the current scheme encourage?
• What does it make harder?
• Where do people compete rather than collaborate?
• Which important contributions are currently invisible?
• What would you change if you were designing the scheme from scratch?

Then look at the evidence.

Where are margins being lost? Where are clients being protected? Which teams rarely work together? Who is carrying the hidden work of mentoring, supporting colleagues and maintaining relationships?

You may find that the problem is not motivation at all. It may be that your structure is sending mixed messages.

And be careful not to respond with unnecessary complexity.

A reward system should be clear enough for people to understand and trusted enough for them to believe it is fair. If nobody can explain how the bonus is calculated, you have a problem before the money is even paid.

Make the conversation bigger than the bonus

The best reward discussions are not only about pounds and pence.

They are conversations about the organisation you are building.

What kind of leaders do you want to develop? What kind of client experience do you want to create? How should people behave when nobody is watching? What does success look like when the business is five years further down the line?

Those questions matter.

People buy from people, and people choose where to stay based on the experience of working there. A bonus might get someone’s attention, but it will not build trust, belonging or professional pride on its own.

Sustainable growth rarely comes from brilliant individuals working harder in isolation.

It comes from building an organisation where people consistently succeed together.

So, before you increase the bonus pool or introduce another commission scheme, pause for a moment…

If everybody optimised their reward, would your organisation become more collaborative, more profitable and more resilient?

Or would the wrong behaviour simply get louder?

That answer is telling you where to look next.