“Although this year is difficult, I still try to ensure that my colleagues, although not as good as last year, are still on par with other businesses in the same field,” he said, “but there are still whispers. Some employees even want to leave. I am not worried about losing people, but I am sad because there are employees who do not understand the efforts of the manager.”
I smiled and said to him: "Have you read the story about the candy?"
The story is: Your neighbor has a cute and adorable baby, you love him very much. Every day you give him candy. You do it willingly, regularly and happily. The baby also seems to love you. Every day when he sees you, he smiles and runs to get candy.
Then one day, you feel a little tired and forget that you have run out of candy and haven’t gone to buy some yet. You meet the child on the way home from work, pat his head and say: “I’m out of candy”. Suddenly, you see his attitude change. He becomes indifferent, cold and screams that you are stingy, you are bad. Or he goes around telling everyone that you are no longer nice to him.
The candy philosophy means that when you give someone something, they often don’t think of it as a gift, they think of it as an obligation, a responsibility. When you don’t give them what they want anymore, they will immediately have a different attitude towards you. If you were in that situation, would you be able to continue “giving”? For many people, even if you give them candy every day, they will only remember the day you didn’t give them.
"So does that mean you advise me not to give candy or Tet bonuses to employees anymore?" - my friend asked.
“No. You know, motivating employees is always an important part of any management curriculum. Bonuses or Tet bonuses are to motivate people to try harder in the future. If you cannot achieve this goal, you need to reconsider the reward method,” I said.
The problem is, the person giving candy or receiving candy must have interactions and responsibilities with each other. Tet bonus - although not mandatory because it depends on the revenue and profit of the business - is still the responsibility of the manager and leader. As for the responsibility of the person receiving the bonus, it is to feel that he or she deserves the bonus and make efforts to continue to have bonuses in the following years.
If the responsibility and effort are only from one side, it will create a phase difference and the meaning of the Tet bonus will no longer exist.
I can only advise you to give enough and the right reward to those who deserve it because no one has enough candy to give to everyone.
