40% would change jobs over year-end bonus

Employers in China might want to rethink their year-end bonus practices, since an unsatisfactory payout could be enough to make staff leave: Nearly 40% of white-collar workers would seek to switch jobs based on year-end bonus considerations.That is according to a survey conducted by Chinese career platform Zhaopin among 11,500 white collar workers. Just over half (50.9%) of respondents said they did not get any year-end bonus in 2016. In 2015, that number was even higher at 66%.Those who did get a bonus were given an average of 12,821 yuan (HKD 14,425), and 39.5% received it by the end of 2016. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the finance and real estate/construction industries offered the highest average year-end bonuses 17,241 yuan (HKD 19,399) and 16,839 yuan (HKD 18,946) respectively.Location wise, workers in Beijing were best off with an average bonus of 15,846 yuan (HKD17,829).Employees’ satisfaction with their bonuses remained at a low level of 2.18 out of 5. Employees with less than one year’s experience were most satisfied (2.45) due to relatively low expectations.According to Zhaopin experts, the satisfaction with year-end bonuses declined as work experience increased because more experienced white-collar workers had higher expectations.Nearly 40% of respondents indicated year-end bonus considerations are a deciding factor (18.4%) or a very important consideration (20.6%) when it comes to their job hopping intentions.This article was originally published in Human Resources Online.Photo / iStock