Shopify Aims to Reward Employees’ Improvements of Craft

Shopify reportedly plans to base raises on numerical scores assigned to employees based on their skill level.

Employees will be eligible for a raise only when their score increases within a certain amount of time, Seeking Alpha reported Tuesday (April 23), citing a paywalled article by The Information.

Reached by PYMNTS, a Shopify spokesperson provided an emailed statement: “We’re kicking down the corporate ladder and breaking the cycle of passionate crafters getting funneled into management career paths they might not want just to advance in their career.”

“Mastery, our new talent system, focuses on the individual and their growth journey at Shopify — rewarding people who are really good at what they do, and want to do more of it.”

When describing Mastery in a Feb. 26 blog post, Shopify said this program is designed to avoid the Peter Principle — employees rise to the level of their incompetence — a phenomenon common in most companies in which people advance by climbing the corporate ladder rather than improving their craft.

Mastery, on the other hand, “prioritizes, recognizes and rewards” employees who continuously improve their craft, the post said.

The program “approximates the sum of your applied skills, impact and rewards in your job,” Shopify said in a video accompanying the post.

Every six months, the company will evaluate employees based on their “craft excellence” and “net impact,” with the former being a measure of the employee’s skills and the latter being a measure of how successful they are in applying those skills toward the company’s mission.

“An important aspect of Mastery is constant evolution,” the company said in the video. “Ever watched a sports game from 50 years ago? Chances are it looks very different from what it does today. The rules of play might be the same, but the standards have seriously leveled up. It’s the same with Mastery — it’s an infinite game.”

This news comes at a time when Shopify is growing its merchant base and its Shop Pay solution. During the company’s quarterly earnings call in February, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said that Shop Pay “continues to be the ‘go to’ choice for consumers looking to buy quickly, securely and with as little friction as possible.”