Bonuses for employees in consulting company

dustinp

Hi, we are a small IT consulting company that relies heavily on a workforce, other than myself, that tends to be in college (they work 25+ hours). These guys are eager and ready to learn. If you can deal with them being missing for several hours each week, it works great.That said, I want to provide additional money to them without tying myself to potentially high salaries that could hurt us when business turns slow now and then.I`d like to get your thoughts on my strategy.First, are bonuses just a bad idea? Are higher salaries the way to go?Right now I give bonuses for writing articles, presentations, referrals, after-hours work, a $1000 yearly educational allowance, and 15% of their work-week for self-directed study (paid).My goal is to have a company that can pay market rates for our salary, and help our employees with other benefits. Once we grow larger I`d like to pay above-market salaries. (Again, maybe a bad idea. Perhaps I should dump bonuses and fringe benefits and just bump up salaries a bit now?)So, we are doing well. Right now we have two junior-level consultants. One tends to work on more overhead/internal work (not billable) and the other we bill out for a high percentage of his hours.If I want to pay a bonus, how would I go about it? Quarterly, yearly, per-project? Should I base the bonus on an objective "hours work" basis, or on a subjective "your overall impact on me and the business". The fact that one guy does a lot of overhead work makes it hard to do a bonus based on effect-on-profits in my mind. Thoughts? I`d love to hear them!