【英语财经】奖金对银行家管用吗？ Bonuses are bad for bankers and even worse for banks

It is bank bonus season, seven years on from the greatest financial crisis for generations, and size still matters. Investment bankers — and their critics outside the sector — continue to obsess about how much they are paid, while largely ignoring a much more important question: do cash bonuses even work?

John Cryan, Deutsche Bank’s co-chief executive, seems not to think so. Claiming to be perplexed about the bonus clause in his contract, he told a conference last year he would “not work any harder or any less hard in any year, in any day because someone is going to pay me more or less”. It was an echo of outgoing Shell boss Jeroen van der Veer’s comment in 2009: “If I had been paid 50 per cent more, I would not have done [my job] better. If I had been paid 50 per cent less, then I would not have done it worse.”

The impact of a cash bonus is often shortlived. Staff quickly start to think of it as a permanent part of their compensation. The following year they quite naturally become upset if their bonus turns out to be lower.

It is worse than that. When you show participants a banknote and ask them to describe it, they then behave in “an unfair and even cheating manner” in a game of trust. David De Cremer of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, who helped organise the experiment, says investment bankers “perform the worst of any participants”. I asked him how they react when the result is explained to them: “Very defensively.”

The banknote ploy is called “priming”. Modern investment bankers are the product of decades, if not centuries, of priming: working with money and measuring success by fees won, deals achieved and trades executed. It is no more surprising that bankers come home thinking about cash than that bakers arrive dusted with flour. Double-prime the same people with the lure of bonuses and you are bound to get a season of ingratitude, selfishness and backbiting.

The brain is a complex tool. Just battering one part of it with blunt financial incentives can backfire. I do not begrudge any hard worker their pay, but there are subtler and better ways to get staff to contribute more. I speak as someone who was once surprised to find that the mere offer of a cookie from a superior offset the pain of a negative encounter. Working for biscuits is not an option in the City or on Wall Street, however. Other alternatives must be found.

Some Deutsche senior staff have, for instance, agreed to sacrifice part of their bonus to bolster the payouts of junior colleagues. What looks like altruism is actually more like a higher form of selfishness. The managers will do anything to keep their profitable teams together. But it is a start.

Deutsche itself suggested last week that it would begin to place more emphasis on base salary for some staff. Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Credit Suisse, describes remuneration as a “battle ground”. He is not against bonuses for his investment bankers, if pay goes up and down with performance, but, he pointed out, “it’s the ‘and down’ that they don’t accept”.

Another chief executive of a global bank says privately he wants to explore other ways to motivate his staff, based on improving their wellbeing and self-motivation. JPMorgan last week introduced “Pencils Down”, an initiative to encourage bankers not working on live deals to relax at the weekend, cutting burnout risk.

One problem is that the effect of such policies is harder to assess and research than the published bonus data. “The extra day’s holiday, the birthday gift sent to your home: how do you quantify them?” asks Raghavendra Rau, another Judge academic, who used to work for Barclays Global Investors (now part of BlackRock).

As the science develops, so should understanding of how non-cash perks lead to sustained improvements. But banks could already make clearer to employees the positive impact of their work on customers and society — a tactic that studies prove can inspire better results.

Oddly, bonus-fixated bankers favour this approach, even if it is hard to make them admit it. In one survey by Prof De Cremer, executives were unanimous that bonuses were vital for hiring talented bankers. But when asked if they would prefer to entrust their savings to a banker for whom money was the primary motive, or to one who enjoyed his job and was excited to serve clients, they all chose the latter.

又到了银行奖金季，数代人以来最严重的金融危机过去7年后的今天，金额仍然重要。投资银行家（以及金融行业以外的批评者）继续纠缠于他们得到了多少奖金，同时基本上忽视了更为重要的问题：现金奖金管用吗？

德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)的联席首席执行官约翰?克赖恩(John Cryan)似乎认为奖金并不重要。他去年在一场会议上声称，对自己合同内的奖金条款感到困惑，表示“不会因为给的多或者给的少，而在任何一年、任何一天更努力或者更不努力工作”。这呼应了即将离职的壳牌(Shell)首席执行官范德伟(Jeroen van der Veer)在2009年的评论：“如果多给我50%的奖金，我不会干得更好。如果少给我50%的奖金，我也不会干得更差。”

现金奖金的效果往往维持不了多长时间。员工很快会将它视为自己永久薪酬的一部分。第二年如果奖金减少，他们会很自然地感到沮丧。

还有比这更糟糕的一面。当你在一个信任游戏中向参与者展示一张钞票并要求他们描述的时候，他们会表现出“不公平甚至欺诈的”行为。帮助组织这个实验的剑桥大学佳奇管理学院(Judge Business School)的大卫?德克里默(David De Cremer)表示，投资银行家“在所有参与者当中表现最差”。我问他，这些人在听到关于结果的解释后如何反应？答案是：“戒备心很强。”

这种钞票把戏被称为“促发”。现代投资银行家是数十年（如果不是几个世纪的话）促发的产物：与钱打交道，并以赚到的手续费、做成的交易和执行的买卖来衡量成功。银行家回家还想着钱和面包师沾着一身面粉回家一样不让人意外。用奖金诱惑来“双重”促发同一个人，你注定会得到忘恩负义、自私和诽谤中伤。

大脑是一件复杂的工具。仅用生硬的财务激励来刺激大脑的某一部分可能适得其反。我不嫉妒任何勤奋工作者的报酬，但存在更细腻和更好的方式让员工做出更多贡献。我曾经意外发现，上司给了我一块饼干，就化解了一场不愉快遭遇的痛苦。然而，为饼干工作不是伦敦金融城或者华尔街的选项。必须找到替代激励。

例如，德银的一些高管同意牺牲自己的部分奖金来提高初级同事们的报酬。这种看似利他的行为实际上更像一种高级自私行为。经理们将竭尽全力让自己的盈利团队保持团结。但这是一个开始。

德银最近建议，将开始更加注重某些员工的基本工资。瑞信(Credit Suisse)首席执行官迪德简?蒂亚姆(Tidjane Thiam)将薪酬称为“战场”。他不反对为自己的投资银行家发放奖金——如果薪酬随着业绩上下浮动的话，但他指出，“问题是‘向下浮动’这部分是他们不可接受的”。

另一家全球银行的首席执行官私下表示，他希望从提高福利和自我激励的角度找到激励员工的其他办法。摩根大通(JPMorgan)最近推出了“放下铅笔”举措，鼓励手头没有交易任务的银行家在周末休息，降低过度劳累风险。

一个问题在于，与公布的奖金数据相比，此类政策的效果更难衡量和研究。佳奇管理学院的另一位学者拉加文德拉?拉乌(Raghavendra Rau)问道：“额外一天的休假，送到你家里的生日礼物：你怎么能量化它们？”拉乌曾经就职于巴克莱全球投资者(Barclays Global Investors)，后者现在是贝莱德(BlackRock)的一部分。

随着科技的发展，对非现金激励如何导致持续改善的理解也应该相应发展。但银行已经可以更清楚地向员工们解释他们的工作对客户和社会的积极影响——研究表明，这种策略可以激发更好的结果。

古怪的是，念念不忘奖金的银行家青睐这种方法，即便很难让他们承认这一点。在佳奇管理学院的德克里默进行的一项调查中，高管们一致认为，奖金对雇佣有才华的银行家至关重要。但在被问及他们会把自己的储蓄委托给一位以金钱为主要动力的银行家，还是委托给一位热爱工作并乐于服务客户的银行家时，他们全都选择了后者。

译者/邹策