A CEO who increased his employee's minimum wage to $70,000 has seen company revenue triple in the last six years.
Dan Price is the CEO of the Seattle-based Gravity Payments, a card processing and financial services company, and he decided to give his employees a minimum wage of $70,000 (£52,612) in 2015.
This decision meant that Price also chose to cut his own salary by 90%.
Despite paying his employees what he thought they were worth, Price was slammed by some, including Fox News, who believed that his experimental approach would never benefit his business.
Taking to Twitter to share the impact that his investment has had on his company, Dan wrote:
"6 years ago today I raised my company's min wage to $70k.
"Fox News called me a socialist whose employees would be on bread lines.
"Since then our revenue tripled, we're a Harvard Business School case study & our employees had a 10x boom in homes bought.
"Always invest in people."
The CEO followed his original tweet up with a number of follow-up posts revealing how the increase in revenue happened in all its mathematical glory.
"Since our $70k min wage was announced 6 years ago today: Our revenue tripled, head count grew 70%, customer base doubled, babies had by staff grew 10x, 70% of employees paid down debt, homes bought by employees grew 10x, 401(k) contributions grew 155%, turnover dropped in half," he told his followers.
He added: "76% of employees are engaged at work, [which is] 2x the national average, customer attrition fell to 25% below nat'l average, we expanded to a new Boise office & enacted $70k min wage there, our highest-paid employee makes 4x our lowest-paid employee, down from 33x."
Dan admitted that while his company has been hit hard by the pandemic because he had shown employees how valued they were, they went above and beyond to ensure its survival.
"At the start of the pandemic, we lost 55% of our revenue overnight," Dan explained. "Our employees were so invested they volunteered to take temporary pay cuts to prevent any layoffs. We weathered the storm, paid everyone back and are now giving out raises."
Dan decided to take drastic action to improve his employees' lives six years ago when he learned that one of them was working a second job at McDonald's to break even.
So, he decided to cut his own salary to give his employees a raise, as he believes no one should be working full time and have to do an extra job on the side.
Now, he's hoping that his company's success will inspire other CEOs to follow his lead and raise their employees' minimum wage.
"I don't miss anything about the millionaire lifestyle. Money buys happiness when you climb out of poverty. But going from well-off to very well-off won't make you happier. Doing what you believe is right will," he said.
