Show notes
Think a surprise bonus is the ultimate way to motivate your team? Listen to this episode for insights on why those unexpected rewards might be doing more harm than good—risking employee trust, teamwork, and long-term performance.
I’m Andrew Lamppa and in this episode, I focused on the widespread practice of giving out surprise bonuses and unpacked the real impact these rewards have on company culture and employee behavior. I cover common reasons employers hand out unexpected bonuses—like celebrating a big win, showing appreciation during tough times, or simply sharing good financial results with the team—and why these bonuses rarely produce the desired outcome of sustainable performance improvement.
A lot of business owners don’t see the risk associated with surprise rewards: when employees can’t predict or understand what triggers a bonus, it can lead to confusion, frustration, and even a loss of trust if a reward doesn’t materialize next time.
Key Takeaways
- Surprise bonuses feel good in the moment, but rarely change long-term behavior because employees don’t know what to do to earn them again 02:10.
- Unpredictable rewards can set dangerous expectations, opening the door to disappointment and decreased trust if bonuses aren’t repeated in future success cycles 03:01.
- For a bonus to truly motivate, it must be:
- Visible: Employees need to see progress and know what metrics matter 05:05.
- Influenceable: Every team member should understand how their individual actions contribute to the goal 05:34.
- Predictable: Clear payout guidelines eliminate confusion and encourage consistent performance 06:30.
- Structured, transparent incentive plans drive better results than one-off bonuses, helping build a culture of accountability and ownership 06:27.
Ready to transform your reward system and build a team that thinks, acts, and cares like owners? Subscribe to The Bonus Podcast for more actionable insights on incentive plans that drive real results. Don’t miss the next episode—hit follow and unlock your team’s full potential!
Read the full transcript
Andrew Lamppa [00:00:04]:
Surprising your employees with a bonus feels generous, feels good. But if you're hoping it's going to somehow measurably change behaviors, the fact that it's a surprise is actually part of the problem. Hi, I'm Andrew Lampa, and this is The Bonus Podcast, creating employees who think, act, and care like owners. So let's talk about the bonus The surprise bonus. Man, that's an exciting thing. People love getting surprises and they love getting bonuses. So what are some of the reasons employers give out a surprise bonus? One of them might be they looked at their bank balance and it's actually looking pretty good. Maybe they haven't looked at it in a while and like, you know, we've been working really hard this year.
Andrew Lamppa [00:00:48]:
I want to reward my employees with a surprise bonus. Maybe they feel a little bit of guilt. They look at that bank balance, it's doing good. They don't have an incentive plan officially in place, but they're like, you know what, man, I know my employees would really appreciate it if I shared some of the good work we've been doing by writing out bonus checks to everyone. Maybe it's to lift their spirits. Maybe you just came through a difficult time in the company. Maybe there's been some frustration, maybe there's some staffing changes, or you lost a big deal. You know, any myriad of reasons why people are feeling a little down.
Andrew Lamppa [00:01:24]:
So a bonus can, can lift their spirits. Maybe it's a big deal just landed, they just won it, whatever it is. There's something that we've been working for towards months, maybe quarters, even years, and you won the work. Well, to celebrate, let's give everyone a bonus. Now, it's not a structured compensation, you know, payout based on percentage or anything. It was just a discretionary bonus because You won the big job. Maybe it's a great quarter. Maybe Q2 was 30% greater than last year's Q2.
Andrew Lamppa [00:01:59]:
Whatever it is, a big win can oftentimes trigger a surprise bonus. But the surprise bonus is a very risky endeavor. And if you think or are hoping that this bonus will actually change behavior, most likely it will not. You see, for behavior to change, people need to know what they're actually shooting for, what the target is. And when you do a surprise, people don't know. Now, employees will try to figure it out either based on what you say or maybe not what you don't say, but they're gonna see like, okay, I did X or we did X and we received Y. How can we repeat that? Well, the problem is if they repeat it and you get a bigger deal, or you have a better quarter, you may not pay the bonus this time around because it was a one-off, it was a surprise. But now people are frustrated because they thought they were expecting to get one thing based on past performance, but now they don't.
Andrew Lamppa [00:03:01]:
And that's the problem with the surprise is we want to be generous, we want to show appreciation, but it's not the singular event that causes the problem. It's what of what door are we opening? You know, are we opening Pandora's box for future events for this when this happens to have the expectation put on us that we do the same? Because maybe, maybe the bank balance is really big and we had a good quarter. Maybe next year the quarter is better, but for some reason cash flow is a little tighter because AR got a little longer or some other reason. Now the employees may not realize that, but you can't give the same surprise bonus you did before because because all the metrics aren't like they were last year. See, there's like 99 ways a surprise bonus can go wrong, and there's really only one way it goes right. It only goes right when someone receives it, appreciates it, and never remembers it again, because they, they, they won't have that history. They won't think, oh, last year when this happened, we got this, so it'll happen again. No, it happened, they don't remember it, and you're moving on.
Andrew Lamppa [00:04:06]:
If you could figure out how to give surprise bonuses without any ramifications of future expectations? Let me know, because that would be huge. That would be a huge win. But that's not reality. There are way more reasons a surprise bonus will end up hurting you, losing trust, frustrating employees, than, than the benefits. See, if a reward disappears when people thought they were going to receive one, then trust will actually go down. One of the last things you want as an employer is to lose the trust of your employees. And that's why the surprise bonus is really risky business. Incentives work best when people know what success looks like before the work happens, before the bonus gets paid out.
Andrew Lamppa [00:04:56]:
There's 3 things every bonus plan needs for it to be effective, for it to be effective to change behavior, to increase productivity, Increase performance. First, it needs to be visible. People need to know where they're at. There needs to be some scoreboard. My nephews had a football game last week and there was a scoreboard we could look at to see if we're winning or losing. If the metrics of the bonus are not visible, then, then people don't know how they're performing. They don't know what the score is, and it's not very enticing or motivating. to do something if you don't know how you're actually doing.
Andrew Lamppa [00:05:34]:
Next, it needs to be influenceable, meaning I as an employee need to know what levers I can pull to get the bonus. If it's discretionary, if it's a surprise, I don't know. But when it's systemized, when it's developed and built properly, I know if I do these things and we get these results, I will get this bonus, this payout. And it needs to be individually influenceable. It can't just be company-wide for it to really change behavior. If you want to change behavior, someone needs to know, if I show up more, if I make more dials, if I do the drawings more aligned with how we promise our customers we'll do them, if I do the work a little faster, if I implement the right tools and software and technology that we have to make my work more efficient, if I do these things, then there will be a bonus. Well, now you can start influencing behavior. And lastly, it needs to be predictable.
Andrew Lamppa [00:06:30]:
Employees need to know if A, then B. So if we do these things and we hit these numbers, this is the payout. That's why when I build an incentive plan, we do a payout table and it lays out if, if all these metrics happen, this is your expected payout. pay range or pay amount. Because if it's not predictable, then you're still left in the dark, you're still confused. Even if you know what the score is, even if you know what levers you can pull to influence it, if you don't know what the ending result is, it's not going to be very motivating, it's not going to truly change behavior like it can. So everyone loves surprises. You just want to be careful what you're signing up for when that surprise is a bonus check.
Andrew Lamppa [00:07:19]:
So if you want your bonus to change behavior, your employees need to know how to win. They need to know what they're working for before the work shows up, before the bonus is getting ready to pay it out. Follow the Bonus Podcast, and I'll see you next time.
Meet Andrew Lamppa
Andrew Lamppa is a business coach, former 25-employee business owner and founder of Built to Benefit.
Before coaching business owners, Andrew spent 14 years building and operating his own company, which was running at 4x his industry’s profitability and 8x his industry’s growth at the time it was acquired in 2018. Along the way, he became fascinated with a question many small-business owners struggle with:
How do you get employees to care about the success of the business without expecting them to act like owners while giving them none of the upside?
Today, Andrew works with small-business owners to improve employee ownership, performance, profitability and leadership systems.
The Bonus Podcast is where he explores one of his favorite pieces of that puzzle: how businesses pay, measure, reward and incentivize the people helping build them.