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Pay transparency is having a moment. Across Europe and beyond, new regulations are pushing organizations to disclose salary bands, justify pay differences, and confront longstanding inequities. It is a necessary shift and it’s long overdue. But there is a risk that, in focusing exclusively on base salary, companies miss a more elusive and equally consequential driver of inequality: the bonus gap.
Bonuses, incentives, and variable pay are often treated as secondary components of compensation. They are not. In many roles, they represent a substantial share of total earnings. More importantly, they are where discretion thrives and bias follows.
I learned this early. In my first internship, at a software company, I discovered almost by accident that the male intern who had preceded me—same role and duration—had received a higher bonus. The justification was vague. That was my introduction to how variable pay works in practice.
If organizations are serious about closing gender pay gaps, they must go beyond salary grids and confront how bonuses are actually distributed. That requires rethinking not just compensation policies, but the everyday managerial decisions that shape outcomes. Here are four ways to get started.
1. Audit opportunity allocation, not just outcomes
Most companies measure pay gaps at the end of the process: who earned what, and why. But when it comes to bonuses, inequality often originates much earlier.
In performance-based roles, bonuses depend on access to opportunity—key accounts, high-potential clients, strategic territories. These assignments are rarely neutral. They are shaped by informal networks, managerial trust, and perceived “fit.” And they tend to favor those who already resemble incumbents. Two employees may have identical targets and commission rates, yet vastly different chances of achieving them.
I experienced this firsthand in one of my very first jobs when I was selling IT services to businesses. My assigned list of prospects was, to put it charitably, the leftovers, small accounts, cold leads, companies that had already said no. At the end of the year, I did not hit my targets. I walked away with my base salary, a thin one, and a lesson about how inequality starts long before anyone picks up the phone.
To address the bonus gap, organizations must start auditing how opportunities are distributed. Who gets the most lucrative accounts? Who is assigned to high-growth markets? Who inherits established client relationships?
This requires making the invisible visible. Companies should track the revenue potential of assigned portfolios, not just individual performance. They should compare distributions across gender and other dimensions, and treat disparities as seriously as pay gaps themselves. Equal pay cannot exist without equal access to opportunity.
2. Formalize the criteria behind bonuses
Unlike salaries, which are typically governed by structured pay bands, bonuses often rely on loosely defined criteria: “performance,” “impact,” “leadership,” or “potential.” These categories sound objective, but in practice they are highly subject to individual interpretation.
When evaluation criteria are vague, decision-makers tend to default to mental shortcuts, stereotypes, affinity bias, or subjective impressions. In other words, the less formalized the system, the more room there is for inequality to creep in. Yet in many organizations, bonus decisions are still made with limited documentation and little traceability.
Fixing this does not require eliminating managerial judgment, but it does require framing it. Companies need to define clear, measurable indicators for performance-related bonuses, and ensure that these indicators are consistently applied. Where qualitative assessments are necessary, they should be anchored in observable behaviors, not abstract traits.
Decisions should also be documented to create accountability.
3. Make bonus decisions more transparent
Transparency transforms salary conversations. It can do the same for bonuses, but only if organizations are willing to extend it. Many employees have little visibility into how bonuses are determined. They may know their own targets, but not how their performance is evaluated relative to peers. This opacity creates fertile ground for mistrust, and for inequality.
Introducing transparency means clarifying the process. What percentage of bonuses is tied to individual versus team performance? How are targets set? How are exceptional contributions recognized? What checks are in place to ensure consistency across managers?
Some organizations go further by making sure bonus decisions are reviewed collectively, which helps create a shared standard of fairness. Transparency also shifts the burden of explanation. Instead of employees having to question disparities, managers must be able to justify them.
4. Train managers to correct bias
Many managers are not trained to make equitable compensation decisions. They are promoted for operational performance, not for their ability to assess others objectively. Too often they fall back on gut feeling, and on the assumption that their gut is a reliable instrument, which it rarely is.
Identical behaviors are often interpreted differently depending on who exhibits them. Assertiveness may be rewarded in one employee and penalized in another. Availability and visibility—both key drivers of bonus outcomes—are themselves shaped by unequal constraints, particularly for caregivers. Think of the parent rushing out at 5pm to pick up a child from daycare, while her colleagues stay behind for that drink with clients that somehow always matters at year-end review.
Training managers to recognize these dynamics is essential. But training alone is insufficient if it can remain abstract. It must be tied to concrete practices: how to evaluate performance against predefined criteria, how to document decisions, how to challenge one’s own assumptions.
Bias may not be eliminated entirely. But it can be managed, acknowledged and measured better.
From policy to practice
Workplace inequality does not primarily reside in formal rules, but in their execution. Companies can have perfectly equitable salary grids and still produce unequal outcomes.
Fighting the bonus gap therefore is not a marginal issue. Over time, differences in bonuses compound, affecting career progression, wealth accumulation, and perceived legitimacy within organizations.
There is one more dimension that rarely makes it into these conversations: maternity leave. In France where I live, women on maternity leave are compensated at their normal salary level—which sounds great, until you realize that bonuses and variable pay are typically excluded. For American readers, even this may sound generous. But for me, watching a significant share of my income disappear felt like a clear signal that caregiving is penalized.
The good news is that the levers for change are within reach.
Nearly every solopreneur starts their business saying “yes” to everything. After all, you’re trying to get clients and build a business. Revenue is unpredictable, and your brain treats every opportunity like it might be the last.
But when you work for yourself, every “yes” comes at a cost. Agreeing to one project means declining another — or giving up time you can’t get back. Defaulting to “yes” is how solopreneurs end up overcommitted, underpaid, and working on projects that don’t move their business forward.
Saying no is a business skill and, like any skill, it gets sharper with practice.
Saying no to bad-fit clients
Not every client who reaches out is a good fit (you’ll quickly realize). Some will cost too much in their demands on your time and energy. The frustration isn’t worth the revenue they bring in.
In the beginning, the red flags might be hard to spot. But eventually, you’ll learn that a client with a vague scope will morph into a project you can’t control. Or a project outside your core expertise will take twice as long. Or something about the initial conversation makes you feel like your working style won’t match the client’s.
Learning to trust your gut at the earliest stage — and to walk away before signing a contract — is one of the most protective decisions you can make for your business.
If you’re early in your solo career, you might not feel like you can afford to say no yet. That’s completely understandable. But you can start building the muscle now, even if it means being more selective about which red flags you’re willing to tolerate. Over time, client selection becomes more of a core business practice.
Saying no to protect your time
Then there are the smaller yeses — the ones that don’t look like much individually — compound fast. Clients ask for a “quick call” that runs 45 minutes. You agree to an unpaid collaboration for “exposure” that turns into a multi-week commitment. Or you absorb scope creep because it’s easier than pushing back.
Your time is what you’re trading. Every hour spent on low-value obligations is time not spent on billable work or building something for your business (or time spent on life outside of work).
A simple filter can help: Does this serve my priorities right now? What am I giving up to do it? If you can’t answer these questions clearly, that’s a sign to decline.
Saying no to shiny objects
Sometimes, the hardest “no” for many solopreneurs isn’t to a client or a calendar invite… it’s to their own ideas. They think of a new offer for clients or a new product they can create and immediately start building.
My personal and near-constant brush with “shiny object syndrome” is trying new apps and tools. I’m an incessant tinkerer. But these cost time and are a distraction from other business priorities if I don’t rein myself in.
The temptation is real, especially if your core work starts to feel routine or mundane. However, chasing every new idea dilutes your focus and splits your energy across too many things.
Before committing to something new, you might ask yourself: will this move my business forward, or is it merely a distraction?
Saying no creates space
Saying no feels uncomfortable for nearly every solopreneur at some point. Every declined opportunity felt like a missed one.
But with practice, you’ll start seeing things differently, especially if you can reclaim your time or focus on projects that excite you. Saying no is about trusting that better-aligned opportunities will come — and that you’ll have the bandwidth to take them on when they do.
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Generative AI has made it possible for individuals to perform tasks that once required entire teams. Today, a single marketer can produce campaign assets, analyze data, and generate content at scale. A product manager can prototype, test, and iterate without relying on engineering; and developers can ship reams of high-quality code written by machines. The result is the rise of the “superpowered individual” who can do the work of many.
It’s tempting to extrapolate from this that human collaboration is becoming obsolete. If AI can replicate or augment the cognitive contributions of multiple individuals, why bother with the friction of teamwork at all?
In our work with top companies—Tomas as an organizational psychologist and author of I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, and Dorie as a keynote speaker and consultant for companies reinventing themselves in the face of AI—we’ve encountered a wide range of experimentation, with companies using agents to stress-test strategy, deliver key functions such as finance and operations, and serve as quasi-autonomous development teams.
Still, we believe that teamwork is here to stay—though AI will almost certainly reshape it. Specifically, we believe teamwork will shift in three key ways:
1. Team composition will change. Teams are likely to become smaller (and perhaps more nimble) because individuals can do more on their own, and teams may include both human and nonhuman contributors. As a result, it won’t be sufficient for a few people to be “good with AI.” AI literacy has to become a core team capability, not an individual skill. Teams need shared norms around emerging topics like:
- When to rely on AI (and when not to);
- Understanding the difference and trade-offs between speed and quality, efficiency and accuracy, low-value and high-value work; and
- How to interrogate AI’s outputs and combine them with human judgment.
Effective teams will need to develop a mechanism for rewarding people not just for using AI efficiently, but for spotting when it’s wrong. In practice, that may mean making “AI skepticism” a formal part of performance evaluation.
2. The focus of teams will change. Today, many teams focus on logistical issues—a hodgepodge of analysis, reporting, and coordination across divisions and departments. (Status update, anyone?) That kind of task-based teamwork may soon be obsolete, because AI can handle it faster and more efficiently.
But teamwork was never just about task execution—and in the AI era, teamwork will evolve into a higher-value activity that unlocks new possibilities for organizations. Indeed, as transactional collaboration declines, relational collaboration becomes more important.
Leaders should invest in trust-building deliberately: fewer but higher-quality interactions, more in-person time when possible, and structured opportunities for disagreement. Psychological safety matters, but so does intellectual friction. The goal is not harmony, but productive conflict.
As a result of this change, teamwork is likely to feel increasingly meaningful—like a core component of both your job and your professional identity. When you can connect deeply with other people through shared goals and activities, it becomes a highly meaningful experience that increases loyalty to your team and your company.
3. The role of leaders will also shift. Leaders in the AI era will need to make three major changes in how they guide their team members. Specifically, that means:
- Becoming more intentional about focusing the team on high-value work. With AI handling more of the analytical and operational workload, leaders will need to redesign teams around judgment, not tasks. Teams should be explicitly chartered around higher-order goals: framing problems, making trade-offs, and aligning on priorities. In other words, the “soft” skills of leadership may become the hardest to replace. A simple rule is that if a meeting could be replaced by an AI-generated summary, it probably should be.
- Reconceptualizing your role as an orchestrator, not the source of answers. Leaders should begin to think of themselves as the architects of how humans and machines work together. That means clarifying roles between AI and people, setting decision rights, and ensuring accountability. It also requires resisting the temptation to defer to AI when stakes are high. Judgment, not output, remains the leader’s ultimate responsibility.
- Measuring what actually matters. In many organizations, performance is still evaluated based on visible activity rather than quality of thinking. In an AI-enabled world, this becomes dangerous. Leaders should shift metrics toward decision quality, learning speed, and long-term outcomes, rather than short-term productivity gains.
In short, the old teamwork of processing and coordination is on its way out. But the new teamwork—integrated with AI and suffused with human talent and judgment—will be more essential than ever, and organizations will need to figure out how to evolve.
The risk is not that AI will destroy teamwork, but that it will expose how much of what we have previously called teamwork was never that valuable to begin with. The opportunity is to rebuild it around what humans do best: thinking critically, connecting meaningfully, and deciding wisely so that the sum of a team is greater than its parts.
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