My bonus was pro-rated to deduct my maternity leave

[mh86]

@ames96 Okay question, I used PTO days over my STD time so it would be paid. Those days should count towards my “time with company” right?

 

[aviso]

@mh86 PTO should absolutely count towards your time w/company. I've typically seen bonuses tied to # of days paid. Paid leave counts toward bonus, unpaid leave does not.

 

[mh86]

@aviso Okay that makes sense!!

 

[mh86]

@ames96 Thank you! And thank you for driving change!

 

[godhelpag]

@mh86 Hi! I do HR and we don’t do this. It would be like punishing an employee for having a baby… I say 100% pushback. What was your performance rating? There’s technically nothing illegal about this, but they should know it’s not best practice for retaining talent. Also, you’re a female engineer which is very valuable. You have a lot of ground to stand on and make a case.

 

[mh86]

@godhelpag My rating has been “exceeds expectations” all 7 years I’ve been there. I expect the same this year. My boss 100% supports me and told me to include him on my note to HR so he can back me up. Thanks for giving me the confidence to fight this! Even if it doesn’t work for me, maybe I can start the conversation to help someone else

Eta yes, I’m a female engineer working in construction. I should have some pull on changing this dumb policy lol

 

[karlthemuss]

@mh86 I’m a female engineer in construction and I would raise hell if my company did that. Not ok in this day and age

 

[wernalip]

@mh86 You should absolutely raise hell. It's a dumb policy and probably hasn't been fought given your industry. Fight it!

 

[godhelpag]

@mh86 You should have received more than all of your bonus!!! Ridiculous they’d punish you for having a baby… good luck, you got this!! They need you more than you need them.

 

[charlespe]

@godhelpag Ugh I work at a law firm so my chances of anything changing in my favor are slim to none, but my raise and bonus were reduced because of mat leave. My coworker who I trained and doesn’t have nearly as much experience as I do, got a 10% raise and mine was 3.5% and I’m more upset about that then my bonus being $500 less than hers. I feel like raises are/should be based on merit whereas bonuses would be hours worked, but not at my job! Basically they gave her a raise to make her salary $1,000 less than mine when she was still fairly new to the job.

 

[mh86]

@charlespe Shoot I hadn’t thought about the impact it would have on my raise. I’m going to look into that too.

 

[bbryup]

@godhelpag “Technically not illegal but not the best for retaining talent” is literally how 95% of American businesses are ran

 

[mh86]

@bbryup My husband is working on his MBA and pointed out that a real business tactic is to encourage people to move on once they reach a certain point. Like they would rather have someone that does 70% the work for 50% of the pay. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, but I can totally see that being a real thing

 

[dasheek]

@godhelpag Bonus season is right around the corner so I need to understand this. My co worker was out almost 5 months on maternity/ST and I had to pick up her entire workload.

Every department in corporate America gets a pool of money to be distributed amongst the team as bonus.

How would it be fair for my co worker to receive the same amount of that pool of funds as I did, with doing 6 months less work?

I understand the argument of “prorating a bonus would effectively punish somebody for having a baby”

The flip side of this is that if she receive a full bonus. I ultimately got punished for doing somebody else’s work for 5 months for zero reward.

How does that make sense?

 

[godhelpag]

@dasheek You coworker shouldn’t be knocked for being out on Mat leave, but you can still be rewarded for picking up extra work.
Typically bonuses are on a scale based on rating. So let’s say your employment contract says a 10% bonus and the rating scale for your company is Poor, Unsatisfactory, Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations, Substantially Exceeds Expectations. It might be if you get Meets Expectations, you’ll get 100% of that 10% bonus (this is assuming your company met all its goals for the year and is able to pay out full bonuses). From there, it’s a sliding scale. So the people rated Exceeds Expectations might get 110% of their 10% bonus… Substantially Exceeds might get 120% of their 10% bonus. Those top 2 categories are a very, very small group of people so that’s how they’re able to make that work. If you have a solid manager that recognizes your extra work, you’ll be in those top categories.

I should specify, not every company does it this way. This is just my experience working in Tech.

 

[godhelpag]

@dasheek Also it’s not like the department gets a pool of money to divide… the company as a whole has a pool of money and they’ll divide it based on those ratings. In tech you’ll often see limit on the number of people that can get a rating above meets expectations. The manager has to really make a solid case to their department head who then has to make a solid case to the executives for the employee to get that rating.

 

[emxcore]

@elion Yes. Me too. And I think that’s fair imo.

 

[elion]

@emxcore I agree.

 

[mary2molly]

@mh86 I just want to say, this is fucked up. And since I’m a “burn it all down” kind of bitch I probably would make a comment on one of those #womenshistory posts.

 

[samanthayeah]

@mh86 Yep, when I was out, my bonus was prorated as well. Meanwhile I had never worked harder in my life. Haha