Microsoft will reward its employees with $1500 (around Rs 1.12 lakh) as pandemic bonus in recognition of a challenging fiscal year.

“As a symbol of our appreciation for coming together as One Microsoft during a uniquely challenging year, we are proud to recognise our employees with a one-time monetary gift,” a spokesperson said in response to a query from The Telegraph. This bonus is separate from our compensation programmes, Microsoft said.

Microsoft had over $125 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments for the period ended March 31, 2021. The tech major earned a profit of $15.5 billion for the quarter ended March at a growth rate of 44 per cent.

Microsoft’s chief people officer Kathleen Hogan announced the bonus in a message to the employees on Thursday. The amount will be available to employees in the US and abroad who are below corporate vice-president level that started on or before March 31, 2021, including part time workers on and those on hourly rates.

Microsoft has 175,508 employees worldwide and in India it has over 13,000 employees across 11 Indian cities including Calcutta. However, the employees of its subsidiaries LinkedIn, Github and ZeniMax are not eligible for the bonus.

Addressing investors at the quarterly earnings Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had said that over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves are not slowing down. “In fact, they are accelerating and it's just the beginning. Digital technology will be the foundation for resilience and growth over the next decade,” said Nadella.

A large part of the growth in business in the pandemic for Microsoft has been on account of cloud services with users increasingly relying on such services in a hybrid work model. Microsoft’s meeting platform – Teams – has seen over 145 million daily active users, almost double the number a year ago. Rising PC sales has also supported Microsoft’s growth.

Earlier, Facebook gave its 45,000 employees $1000 each and Amazon gave $300 holiday bonus for frontline workers.