Company gets rid of bonus incentives to work on holidays, then reprimands employees for not volunteering to work: ‘You only get as much loyalty as you pay for’

When a workplace is set in a way that relies on employees working unconventionally, this workplace should figure out a way to ensure they are actually able to find employees willing to do the job. Any job no one wants to do offers some kind of reward, an incentive, to ensure that people would still want to sign up for it. 

The company in the story below, for example, requires staff on site 7 days a week. It means that people must agree to work weekends and holidays to ensure the work gets done on time. In a competitive line of work, where there are enough workplaces offering the same role but without demanding employees work weekends and holidays, this one company must find a way to convince people to work for them.

Up until now, the company offered bonus incentives to employees willing to work weekends and holidays. An employee who agrees to work weekends gets a 2x overtime rate, and a 3x overtime rate for those who work during the holidays. That was a great incentive to ensure the workers are happy to pitch in and work during these unconventional days, while the company profits from the 7-day work schedule.

However, this year, for some unknown reason, the company decided to change things up. "Effective immediately, there would no longer be a holiday incentive". The company decided that if an employee agrees to work on a paid holiday, they would be paid regularly and therefore forfeit the holiday hours. Following this announcement, you'd think that the company would not be surprised that there would be no "volunteers" to work during the holidays, but they were still disappointed to discover they had no workers during Christmas and the days after New Year's Eve.

The lack of available and willing workers obviously meant that no work was done during the holidays, which directly led the company to a massive money loss due to the penalties for missed deadlines. Probably a lot more money than what they would have paid if they kept the bonus incentive for their employees intact…