Technology giant Microsoft is giving one-time bonuses worth US$1,500 to its employees in appreciation of the challenging fiscal year that has just passed. Kathleen Hogan, Chief People Officer at Microsoft, announced the bonuses in an internal memo last week.

Microsoft employs 175,508 workers globally and the bonus of US$1,500 will be provided to each employee below the level of corporate vice president, including part-time employees as well as those working on a hourly basis. The bonus will be given to all eligible employees who have joined Microsoft on or before March 31, 2021. However, the bonus will not be extended to people employed at LinkedIn, GitHub, and ZeniMax, although Microsoft owns these companies.

Considering the number of eligible employees within Microsoft, the overall bonus amount will be around US$200 million.

The idea behind bonuses and assistance to workers encourages Microsoft's working model and serves as a gesture to its employees who helped generate profits in the last challenging fiscal year even during difficult times like the pandemic. The tech giant gained 38 percent profit during the first quarter of 2021. Moreover, due to expansion of cloud services, increase in Windows usage and electronics sales, and merger of businesses and companies, Microsoft generated over US$160 billion in revenue.

Microsoft is not the sole company to hand out bonuses and gifts to its employees. There are other companies as well who performed well during the pandemic and as a gesture of appreciation, extended gifts and bonuses to its workers. Facebook gave a US$1,000 bonus to its employees in March 2020, Google made a similar gesture in May 2020, and Amazon handed out a US$300 bonus to its front line workers and US$150 to part-time workers.