Microsoft announces ‘cash award’ of up to 25 per cent of annual bonus to some of its employees: Check details

Microsoft will give up to 25 per cent of annual bonus as a 'cash award’ to some of its employees. Going by a CNBC report, a memo shared by Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief people officer to its employees states all salaried and hourly workers at the senior director level and below will be eligible for the award. It added, that all the junior-level employees can get an award amounting upto 25 per cent of their bonus, while the senior directors might get up to 10 per cent.

The memo revealed that with this move, the company wants to show recognition to workers for a good fiscal year. Notably, Microsoft witnessed a jump of 15 per cent from last year in its Q4 results. The full fiscal year, which ended on June 30, saw an increase of 16 per cent, up from 7 per cent in fiscal 2023.

In terms of shares, Microsoft shares are up by 26 per cent in the past year. Hogan, in the memo, stated, that the additional payouts may vary in size as they are designed to be meaningful across different levels.

As per the report, the Satya Nadella-headed tech giant will easily be able to retain its employees with this strategy in the competitive AI market. This comes after Microsoft fired around 10,000 employees across mixed reality, AR and VR divisions in 2023. This move is aimed at boosting the morale of existing employees.

In other news, Microsoft named OpenAI in the list of competitors alongside Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta in its latest annual report. Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor after investing $13 billion into the AI startup. As per the long-term partnership, OpenAI serves as its exclusive cloud provider and uses its models in products for commercial clients and consumers.

In the filing, Microsoft mentioned OpenAI as a competitor in AI offerings and in search and news advertising. OpenAI recently announced its prototype of search engine called SearchGPT.