Maryland Real Estate Company Surprises Employees With $10 Million Bonus

Source: Siriwat Nakha / EyeEm / Getty

Real Estate Company Surprises Employees With Huge Holiday Bonus

A Baltimore-based commercial real estate company by the name of St. John Properties provided a whopping $10 million bonus for its 198 employees to split. The company presented the lucky workers with their surprise at its annual holiday party on December 7.

Individual employee bonuses ranged anywhere from from $100 to $270,000, according to the company’s LinkedIn post. On average, each employee received about $50,000.

“The [bonus] distribution was based solely on years of service. It had nothing to do with a person’s position in the company,” The president of St. John Properties told Yahoo Finance. “We spent a little bit of time discussing it and believe me, once we made that decision, we realized that was the only fair and equitable way of handling this.”

Before the whole thing went down, there were only five people in the company who knew about this major bonus surprise.

What prompted the bonus was the company’s goal back in 2005 to double the size of its portfolio from 10 million square feet to 20 million square feet, according to the company’s president. At the time, St. John Properties had no idea how long the goal would take to reach, but had a reasonable goal of nearly 40 years.

“It took 14 years,” He explained. “In celebration of that major achievement, we wanted to find a way to thank and reward of all our employees.”

And once the announcement was made, all of the employees were visibly overwhelmed with emotion.

“I heard screaming, crying, laughing, hugging, and then within 10 to 15 minutes, everyone came forward to the front podium where Ed St. John and I were standing and started forming lines to shake our hands, to kiss us, to hug us, to thank us,” the president said.

One employee, who has been with the company for 44 years, received a $270,000 bonus, while a new employee who started earlier this week received a $100 bonus.

“What occurred that night exceeded my expectations tenfold,” the president said. “It was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve had in my 40 years of business experience. It literally brought tears to my eyes to hear of all the great potential impact of what we did had on all 198 people.”