Staying at one company for decades was once a badge of honor. But as layoffs have become more common and workers have turned to job hopping for higher pay and career growth, employee loyalty has become harder to find. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, however, still believes earning employee loyalty is worth every penny.
That’s why his hedge fund Pershing Square, which manages roughly $35 billion in assets, offers its four dozen employees generous workplace benefits, including broad ownership and an even rare degree of flexibility for Wall Street.
“There’s not a person at Pershing Square that doesn’t own multiple millions of dollars of stock in the company—whether you’re cleaning the space or at the front desk or another role in the company,” Ackman told Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on a recent episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast. “We believe in taking care of our people.”
Ackman’s approach to retention goes beyond financial incentives. While Perishing employees are required to work from the office five days a week—that policy only applies for 10 months of the year. During July and August, employees can spread out as they like, with the company’s investment team moving to the Hamptons together, either in homes they rent or own, to work.
“We look after people, and so that when you operate that way, people don’t think about going anyplace else,” Ackman said.
Pershing also invests heavily in employees’ health and well-being, Ackman said, offering everything from healthy meals in its cafe to gym access and comprehensive healthcare benefits. With a staff of just 48 people, Pershing has not had one “undesired departure” from the firm.
“I think everyone here feels accurately that they’re a big contributor to our success, and the result is we can accomplish an enormous amount,” Ackman added.
How Ackman built Pershing into a multibillion-dollar firm with ‘people you want to hang out with’
Ackman grew up in New York before graduating from Harvard with his bachelor’s in 1988 and later, his MBA in 1992. That year, he founded Gotham Partners with fellow Harvard graduate David P. Berkowitz, but the investment firm later failed in part after its bets on private companies backfired.
In 2004, he launched Pershing Square Capital Management, the activist hedge fund that has grown into one of Wall Street’s best-known investment firms. Since its founding, Pershing has built major stakes in companies including Chipotle, Universal Music Group, and J.C. Penney. The firm went public on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 2014.
