Top 4 Tips on Christmas Bonuses & Tipping
Who decides the staff’s bonuses?
What’s better than the holiday season? It’s the season of joy and the season to give. We all know that the feeling of giving far supersedes the feeling of receiving. It’s an adrenaline rush when we can hand that $100 bill, check, or gift card to someone who did not expect it. Plus, who wants to be a Scrooge?
For corporations, yearly appreciation is typically done by a bonus. In the service industry, the appreciation is done by tipping. For coop and condo residents that means not one or the other, it entails two types of giving, both bonus and tip.
Although both are paid by residents, the bonus is determined by the board and paid for by residents as part of their monthly charges. Here are our best practice recommendations on how to determine the staff bonus:
The coop board often inherits a bonus that was given by the previous board. Although we recommend keeping at least the same bonus amount, there are times when the previous board gave some crazy amount, high or low, and it needs to be adjusted
Some years, the staff has a lot of extra work in the building where the staff had to put in extra time or efforts outside their regular responsibilities or hours. Those years, we recommend giving them a special “extra” separate from their bonus so that it’s not the base the following year – who remembers what happened a year ago?
The staff reports to the superintendent. Therefore, we highly recommend that the board decides on the total amount, but the super decides on the amount that each staff member gets. The super is the person who knows who is reliable and not and who goes out of their way to make the building a better place and those who don’t
And then there’s the bonus to the property manager and his or her team. Although we see many boards giving this bonus, we feel that that’s the responsibility of the property management firm to give them bonuses, not the client. Our recommendation is that those who are happy with their property management team give directly.
When it comes to tipping, this is at the discretion of the residents. Each resident decides who they want to tip and how much. If you want to find out how much others give, check out BrickUnderground’s annual tipping guide. Rated the BEST Real Estate Website in New York City, BrickUnderground has an ongoing Holiday Tipping Poll where you can enter how much you tip your building staff for future articles on the topic.
In our interactions with boards and residents, we hear some “interesting” stories about bonuses. The story that tops our list of folly is: A property manager was “let go” and the board decided to give that person a $20,000 bonus, AFTER no longer working with the building. All curtesy of the residents. What do you think about that?!
For other best practices for co-op and condo boards, get our FREE Policies and Procedures Checklist emailed straight to your inbox. At The Folson Group, our goal is to inspire you to run your building like a business. We enable and inspire co-op or condo board engagements to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment, excitement, meaning, happiness, and increased probability of success.
Email us at info@thefolsongroup.com or call us at (917) 648-8154 to see how we can help your co-op or condo board today.