World’s best boss?
Quite possibly. A CEO in the US has announced plans to raise the salary of every single one of his employees to at least $70,000 (£47,000) – funded by cutting his own salary by 90 per cent.
That sounds too good to be true…
Dan Price, who heads the Seattle-based tech company Gravity Payments, gathered together his 120-strong workforce on Monday to break the news, which for some will mean a doubling of their salary.
I hope my boss is taking note of this.
The 30-year-old chief executive told ABC News in the US he thought CEO pay was “way out of whack”.
Hear, hear!
In order not to bankrupt the business, those on less than $70,000 now will receive a $5,000-per-year pay increase or an immediate minimum of $50,000, whichever is greater. A spokesperson for the company said the average salary was currently $48,000, and the measure will benefit about 70 members of staff. The target is for everyone to be on $70,000 by December 2017.
And what will Mr Price’s new slimline pay packet look like?
He has pledged to reduce his own pay from $1m (£673,600) a year to the same minimum as everyone else, at least until the company’s profits recover. Making the announcement, Mr Price said: “There are risks associated with this – but this is one of the things we’re doing to try and offset that risk.”
What prompted this radical decision?
Mr Price said he settled on the figure of $70,000 for all after reading a study published by the University of Princeton, which found that increases in income above that number did not have a significant positive impact on a person’s happiness.
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