CEO Announces Rs 7,10,622 Raise For ALL Its Employees & He Might Just Be World's Best Boss!
We'd all love to get an unexpected hike or bonus at work, but how often does that really happen? Not a lot, right?
Well, turn out it does happen if you work for this dude.
Employees at an Idaho business got a piece of unexpected news, worthy enough to make them go crazy with joy. A company where every employee is paid at least Rs 28,42,488 gave its entire staff a hike of Rs 7,10,622.
On top of that, the CEO decided to increase their salary to Rs 49,74,354 in the next five years.
Gravity Payments, a Seattle-based credit card processing company, recently acquired ChargeItPro in Eagle, Idaho, and the group moved into a new office space where CEO Dan Price personally welcomes all employees to the new office and conveyed the happy news to them, personally.
"I'm kind of heartbroken right now by the vast consolidation of wealth and power that's happening, and in addition how that's affecting our decisions around climate," Price, 35, told ABC News Tuesday of his decision.
In 2015, Price took an "80 or 90% pay cut" in his own salary, when he announced a minimum salary of $70,000 for his entire Seattle office.
"I'm sick of being part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution," he said. "Previously, I was making a million dollars a year and people working for me were making $30,000 a year and that's wrong, I was feeding into the problem."
The announcement Monday "allows them to make choices that are in alignment with their values not having them be reliant on money," he said.
"I heard from somebody who was a single parent, that they were not necessarily going to need to work two jobs anymore ... and they were going to be a better parent," he said.
According to Price, you don't have to do crazy math to see where the money comes from. He has long been an advocate of equal pay in corporate America.
"I took between an 80 and 90 percent pay cut, and our chief operating officer took about an 80 percent pay cut, and our executive team absolutely makes less than what other companies would pay," he said. "It absolutely is coming out of executive pay, it's an investment, I think we've proven that it can work."
He also added that, "We are a real business and not a charity organization. We're growing and thriving as a business, we're not taking outside money, we're not taking donations," he added. "We're succeeding as a business doing this."
He says that he is happy to see his employees' lives changing since he rolled out the new salaries at his Seattle branch.
"We went from having zero to two babies born per year to having over 30 babies born." He added that he feels it's "surprising and a bit disturbing," that more companies haven't followed suit in redistributing profits.
"I'm just shocked at the lack of willingness to do this, especially in big companies in corporate America," he added. "We've proven that this can work."
On inequality of pay, he added ¡°Any company that is making over a million dollars a year in profit absolutely should be doing this," he said. "The inequality needs to stop."
