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Former manager here, I definitely leaned on the guys/ladies on the team I could count on over "less committed team members". The ones I could count on were eager and willing to step up when needed and I very much appreciated it. In this case, they were salary and worked more hours than some of their counter parts.

I did my best to reward them with promotion opportunities and supporting them as much as I could in their career.

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So all they got was appreciation and measly pay increase, guess you were playing favorites which only human.

What about giving them bonuses as well?

They would be awarded higher bonuses at review time. I had limited ability to do much out of cycle.

As a manger myself, I try to be careful about what I ask for this reason. I can easily ask a lot from a team member, but I often don't have the ability to really reward them beyond a set limit. If I'm not in a position to adequately reward them for that extra effort then I'm not going to ask for it.

Our position straddles the fence. We have to support the company and our team members. Ideally we do that by keeping incentives and compensation aligned. But corporations are usually structured to have a predictable limit on the ways we can compensate employees, but rarely any limits on what we can expect from employees. We should be careful there to be fair.

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