Microsoft has decided to award its employees a bonus of $1,500 each to help them with their pandemic efforts, saying in an internal memo that the one-time bonus is “a tribute to them for the unique and challenging fiscal year they just passed.”
The gift was announced to employees by Kathleen Hogan, the company’s chief personnel officer, on Thursday, and it is set to apply to all eligible employees both in the United States and internationally, The Verge reported.
The company awards this bonus to all employees of Microsoft’s VP level who joined on or before March 31, 2021, including part-time and hourly workers.
Microsoft has more than 175,000 employees worldwide, but employees of LinkedIn, GitHub and ZineMax are not eligible for the bonus, even though Microsoft owns these three companies.
As a result, the total cost of this bonus will be about $200 million, or less than two days’ worth of profit for the company.
It comes on the heels of similar bonuses to employees at major companies over the past year, including Facebook giving its 45,000 employees $1,000 each and Amazon’s $300 bonus for frontline workers.
British telecoms company BT gave its 60,000 employees £1,500 each (about $2,000), and Vox Media gave the employees a $1,000 bonus late last year.