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Lenovo CEO Shares $3 Million Bonus With Workers
hackingbear writes "Yang Yuanqing, founder and CEO of Chinese PC maker Lenovo, will share $3.25 million from his bonus with some 10,000 staff in China and 19 other countries. 'Most are hourly manufacturing workers,' Lenovo spokeswoman Angela Lee said. 'As you can imagine, an extra $300 in a manufacturing environment in China does make an impact, especially to employees supporting families.' In its annual review last year, Lenovo raised Yang's base pay to $1.2 million and awarded him a $4.2 million discretionary bonus and a $8.9 million long-term incentive award. Yang owns 7.12% of Lenovo's shares, equivalent to about $720 million in stock."
I believe that he did this last year as well.
Good on him, especially considering that Lenovo has been quite successful recently in a contracting PC market
It's easy to be a philanthropist when you're rich. Just sayin'
Its also easy to not share your wealth with your workers.
The workers feel appreciated and will be diligent.
You don't happen upon good employee morale and company stewardship.
It has to be grown. Quality and waste will decrease. When employees feel zero empathy for the company or it's future, a fall is sure to follow.
In before 1000 Libertarians explaining that nobody works unless they're paid money, because nothing is important except accumulation of material tat.
Libertarian here. His stock is worth $720M, and he only gave away 0.5% of that. If his generosity boosts morale enough to generate just 1% more profit, then he has doubled the money. He is publicizing this gift, so the workers are aware of the source, rather than giving anonymously, so he is at least partly motivated by greed. This looks like a smart investment.
If this is all about return on investment, why don't all CEs of multinationals do this?
Are they all that dumb? Are you saying they should all be sacked?
I'm not quite sure what your point is. If you gave away $325 to individuals, how many people would you be able to be able to reach? Keep in mind that the $3m is less than one fourth his compensation this year.
That isn't to stray from the point that giving away personal benefits to his workers is something to encourage, no matter what the motivation was.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Clicked on comments to come and see all the folks who'd make negative comments about him for this. You, among others, didn't disappoint.
There is no indication he's motivated by greed whatsoever, and it's either ignorant or wilfully destructive to cast such aspersions without some concrete evidence.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
No its not, you dont get rich by sharing to begin with.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Implying that a 3,25 million bonus isn't all that much because it would 'only' mean an extra $325 if distributed among employees can really only be the opinion of entitled, rich assholes who never have had to struggle at the end of the month. 8 years ago during my student years an extra 30 bucks a month would have meant the world to me. In Europe. And we are talking about mostly Chinese families here.
TEN THOUSAND OF THEM.
In reality, it's easy to imagine being generous when you don't have much to give.
Bingo. Being rich insulates you from understanding hardship, the most generous people are generally the ones who can least afford it because they experience some level of poverty on a daily basis.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I have a different take on this matter. What exactly does a CEO do that provides so much more value to a company than an engineering team or assembly line laboring away at designing products? Sure, a CEO has a place and can be very instrumental in the effectiveness of the company, but then so too can a brilliant engineer or a factory foreman that can design the next Big Thing or improve efficiency because they know their work that well? Where are the brilliant engineers making CEO pay? Or the factory foremen? And don't think for a second that a CEO is so unique as to be irreplaceable. When a CEO is replaced, shockingly a company keeps running unless he is so bad as to drive the company into the ground. Being unable to attract good talented engineers or having your assembly line strike because of bad treatment can cripple a company just as badly as a bad CEO.
So, the lesson I'd like to give is that every level of a company, be it designers or sales or factory or CEO, has a place in a corporate team and no one entity is less crucial than the other. The only problem is that the CEO disproportionately earns that much more than everyone else. It is about time that the people that labor to make the products or to do the work, that serve as the face of the company moreso than the CEO does, share in the fruit of their efforts.
That would be correct, if the CEO was the only person that was over paid in each company.
The income inequality that you speak of comes from the top ~5% being over paid and there may be a another 10% that are paid a reasonable sum, so you take the top 1-5% and split it among the bottom 85% and it would be a lot more than $300 per person. I looked into this type thing in the past and it ends up being closer to $500/month per employee if you cut the top tier execs pay in half and redistribute.