The stock of professional social network LinkedIn plunged by over 43 percent in a single day after it released its earnings in early February.
Such an event would certainly dampen the spirits of a company's employees. However, with an act of generosity by LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn's employees would be receiving a much needed morale boost.
Tech news website Re/code first spotted the fact that in the documents filed by LinkedIn concerning 2016 compensation packages for its top executives with the Securities and Exchange Commission, no document could be seen for Weiner.
The missing document is due to the fact that Weiner has decided to pass on his annual stock bonus to LinkedIn employees.
"Jeff did not receive an equity package this year at his request," said LinkedIn spokesperson Hani Durzy, who added that Weiner requested the compensation committee to instead put the stock package he would have received back into the pool for employees.
The bonus stocks were said to carry a value of about $14 million, which is in line with the $13 million bonus that Weiner received last year.
The amount will go a long way in lightening the mood at LinkedIn, which posted a disappointing revenue and profit forecast for the first quarter of its financial year. The numbers fell short of Wall Street estimates due to the slowdown in the growth of the company's advertising business and the pressure faced by LinkedIn's hiring services in locations outside North America.
Weiner is not the first CEO to give back to his employees as a morale booster though, as in October last year, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey gave back one-third of the Twitter stocks he owned back to the social network's employees. The stocks, which were equivalent to 1 percent of Twitter's shares, were placed in an employee equity pool.
Dorsey, similar to Weiner, needed to boost employee morale, as upon his return as Twitter's CEO, one of his first moves was to lay off 8 percent of the company's workforce.
