Q: Is it legal to change incentive amounts given after employees reach the goal and were told a higher incentive prior.
work at a bank and we have quarterly incentives for meeting certain goals. The incentive amounts are established every January for the amount that is received if we meet our goal for each quarter. This past quarter since Covid our lobbies have not been open. Therefore, they changed the requirements to reach the incentive to more obtainable goals. The thing is, they changed the amount that we received for reaching our goal. They did not tell us until after we reached the goals that they were decreasing the payout to less than half of what we would normally receive. Is it legal for them to wait until we reach our goals to change the amount even if we have a set incentive amount decided every year? It is almost as if they weren't expecting this many people to reach the goal and now realize it would be too much money and decreased it.
A: Do you have some sort of employment contract or agreement that obligates them to pay the bonus at the prior incentive amount? If not, employers are generally not required to pay an incentive bonus at all.
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