In an internal memo, seen by The Verge, Microsoft has announced that it’ll gift a pandemic bonus to all its employees below the level of corporate vice president, who joined on or before March 31, 2021. The part-time workers and those on hourly rates have also been included in it. The memo says a total of $200 million — which is equivalent to less than the two-day profit of the tech conglomerate — will be spent on the initiative. The memo showed: “Microsoft’s chief people officer, Kathleen Hogan, announced the gift to employees today, and it will apply to all eligible employees in both the US and internationally,” LinkedIn, GitHub and ZeniMax, all subsidiaries of Microsoft, are not part of the pandemic bonus initiative. In view of new Covid-19 variants emerging across the world, Microsoft has decided to delay the reopening of offices till September this year. The company had earlier said it would reopen Redmond, Washington-based headquarters and other big US facilities in phases from March 29 under its six-phase strategy.
