A year ago Zayo replaced the commission plan with a new plan Zayo told us would pay more. But the targets and payouts were subjective and unfair making it impossible to reach the compensation metrics they projected for you. Zayo paid out lower than achievement and along with other components of the plan, there was little incentive to exceed target. Commissions for sales made under the old plan went unpaid. Under the new plan, my income is down 40% from prior years.
The most hurtful example of Zayo overstating and under delivering on compensation incentives is the way they presented and executed equity grants. Before the Zayo IPO, Zayo awarded some but not all their hardworking, dedicated employees equity in the form of common units. The award package stated a common unit is equivalent of one share of stock setting a high expectation of compensation when the company went public. When you signed the equity grant, Zayo made no attempt to disclose their probable true worth.
Not all companies choose to do a pre-IPO reverse stock split; but when they do, the normal shrinkage ranges from half or a tenth of its original size. Zayo called their reduction “waterfall” (a word play on watered down) but essentially a pre-IPO reverse stock split.
As mentioned before, the normal shrinkage ranges from half or a tenth of its original size which is very disappointing but Zayo went below that reducing the common unit shares between 10% to less than 1% of their original size. Setting a high reward expectation and then implementing this amount of reduction was beyond unethical. It was cruel.
Caruso fosters a vision that Zayo will be the equal of Google as a workplace of choice. Maybe it is a myth the Google chef became a millionaire on the Google IPO. Too bad for us Zayo didn’t hire a Google compensation SME. I’m not alone in feeling used, lied to and betrayed. Thanks for reading my post.