In the work environment it is almost a convention to give a commission, a financial bonus or a gift if the employee works well: "Beat goal X and you will start earning close to fair". For the market, the reward scheme seems much more viable than adopting trust.

They are called bonus campaigns, which look more like training campaigns. The shop assistant, or any other clerk, earns an extra percentage on the (low) salary, if a goal is reached. The truth is that the bonus scheme is related to the infantilization of the work environment and an extreme need for control - "Let's give a cookie here for those who do well".

And in this infantilisation, what does the company get? A temporary good performance, perhaps, or the certainty that it only delivers if it has a reward. Without bonuses, they have lunch for four hours and smoke 27 cigarettes? Incentive campaigns are in fact an incessant search for an environment that is totally controllable and never based on trust.

Besides not being sustainable, the reward strategies that bet on "gincananinhas" and gamification of work worsen the performance in the medium term. After all, the effect is: "I'll do my best to be rewarded and, if not, I'll do my job very well here". This generates a clear conditioning of the workforce. Isn't it obvious?

Another problem involved in this scheme is a constant atmosphere of competition which is not healthy. Everyone works so that the company grows, that is, if a person performs well, it should be a collective and not an individual victory. When individual performances are highlighted, it feeds the ego and not the collective.

At Scooto, it was even clear that remuneration is far from being the greatest motivator for doing a good job. It is important, yes, but having a work environment governed by cooperation, by exchange, by trust, by purpose, takes the company much further than bonuses.

Work is the exchange of time for money. Good work happens when that time is delivered in a dignified, respectful and trustful environment. It has to be pleasurable, it has to be good for the ego, it has to have nice people, it has to have fair pay, yes, it has to have purpose, it has to have leisure, including.

From a startup leader's point of view, bonuses are of course a real excuse to pay people less and not take risks. "If they don't sell, I don't pay or pay very little," is what the market says. At the end of the day, employees work for a lot less money.

And that is not what I believe. I believe that the role of companies is to ensure decent and happy conditions for those who collaborate with their growth to carry out their work in a full and interested manner and, as a consequence, to achieve THEIR best INDIVIDUAL performance so that we may have a victory at the collective level.