Businesses are handing out signing bonuses at three times the rate they were before the pandemic. Bloomberg did the story...with numbers from Indeed...indicating about 5% of job listings have some kind of up-front incentive.
But, buyer beware. It's not always as it seems. Our friend Julie Bauke, from the Bauke Group has a few cautions:
1) Better to get the increase to the base salary than the bonus (most of the time)
"From the employee side, (the bonus is) one time, it's normally taxed pretty heavily," Bauke says. "If you can get it in your base salary (instead) it's usually going to accumulate better over time."
2) Watch the fine print
"Remember there are handcuffs typically associated with (the signing bonus)," Bauke says. "You agree to stay for a certain period of time or you have to pay it back.
She says many people walk into a job with a signing bonus and realize the job just wasn't what it looked like on the surface.
"It's a little like perfuming the pig," Bauke adds.
3) Money isn't everything
"When you look at why people go to jobs and stay, money is generally not the reason," Bauke says. "When people DO stay in jobs because of money it's like handcuffs. In a lot of cases they're staying because they think they can't replicate their salary elsewhere."
Down the Audacy app and follow 97.1 FM Talk.
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok
Related
Related
