Noted: The amount of bonus pay workers receive often depends on their rank. Salaried workers exempt from overtime pay notch merit bonuses that are, on average, 4.1% of their salary, according to research from Barry Gerhart, a management professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Meiyu Fang, of National Central University, Taiwan. More than a quarter of officers’ and executives’ pay is tied to performance, according to the study, published in Human Resource Management Review.