COMP NEWS – A Vancouver company is thinking outside the box on incentivizing employees. Shur-Way Building Center, a building supply company, decided to eliminate its flat-rate Christmas bonuses and replace them with a performance-based incentive structure that pays out in Bitcoin.
Bryan Yinger, chief executive at Shur-Way Building Center in Vancouver, is thinking outside the U.S. Treasury to incentivize his employees. He’s giving them Bitcoin.
Yinger’s parents started Shur-Way, opening the first location in Portland in 1983, across the street from the sawmill they already owned with Yinger’s grandfather. The Vancouver location, at 7124 N.E. St. Johns Road, opened around 1999.
The family business has grown over the years. But the pandemic proved to be a challenge for the building supply center. At first the business was closed. Then it opened but employees were nervous about working.
Yet, business was booming, fueled by people staying home and working on their home improvement projects. Shur-Way had lines out the door to the road.
The company first overhauled its Christmas bonus structure, changing it from a flat bonus into a performance-related incentive bonus. Then, they introduced Bitcoin.
The company revamped its Christmas bonuses to be performance related, introduced profit sharing and then added a Bitcoin Employee Bonus program. Employees will be given a percentage of a Bitcoin each April; the first one will be paid out in the coming weeks. In the second and third trimesters of the year, a similar amount will be deposited for each employee into a Shur-Way general fund. The company will control that until it disburses it in increasing portions to employees several years down the road.
The later disbursements, Yinger said, are meant to be a creative retainment tool. So employees will get Bitcoin payments directly each year and more that will accumulate in a group fund for years down the road.
“We spend a lot of time and money training and educating and getting our guys up to speed, and it’s a hard environment,” said Yinger. “People are jumping around jobs because everybody’s just trying to keep up.
“So this is another little hook,” he added.
Yinger sees cyrptocurrency as a greater long-term investment than fiat currencies. Employees who want to invest in cryptocurrency can retain their Bitcoin bonuses, while those who are less sure can sell them for a cash boost.
Yinger, a self-proclaimed nerd and lover of macroeconomics, talked passionately and thoughtfully about why he decided on giving out Bitcoin.
He sees the currency as being a better investment than the other cryptocurrencies on the market and one that he expects to only increase in value over time.
Yinger isn’t concerned about Bitcoin imploding because he said it’s a unique cryptocurrency backed by physical power. Bitcoin was the first established cryptocurrency and arguably the most well known.
Yinger is working with Los Angeles-based Swan Bitcoin to pay his employees their crypto bonuses. Some of his employees are eager to see their Bitcoin accounts grow and others are less sure, he said. Those not wanting to keep the Bitcoin will be able to just cash them out.
Cody Wilson works in the yard at Shur-Way. He’s excited about the new bonus program.
“Digital currency is getting bigger and bigger,” Wilson said. “It’s going to be, I believe, the future of our economy.”
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