Friends,

I’m T-minus 18 days away from one of the biggest things I’ve ever done.

Startup People Summit is a thing I concocted after a career of looking for a community of People professionals working in scaling companies, and finding nothing.

‘Be the change you want to see’ just felt like the obvious response when I kept meeting other People people looking for that same community.

A space to see what others were working on. A space to appreciate it and celebrate it.

(and probably adopt it cause we’re facing the same challenge — imitation is the greatest form of flattery after all)

If you’ve ever felt like that person, then this is your space, too.

I hope you’ll come along and be part of it.

Enjoy this week’s edition ✌️

Matt

In case you’re new here (or just missed it) here’s the past three editions of the FNDN Series:

The People role is one the most chronically under-developed in the business.

You know the story.

You’re so focused on everyone else’s growth, that you forget to do the same thing for yourself.

It’s a trope because it’s true.

If you’ve read even one edition of this newsletter, you know how fast work is evolving. Too many people are letting it outpace them.

Startup People Summit is the event that won’t just get you up to speed, but put you ahead of 99% of the profession.

It’s the most accessible, comprehensive development event you can find. Here’s what I mean:

The main event is just 1-day, designed to develop you into the People professional your company is looking for. And it’s happening 3 September.

I hope to see you there.

- Matt

Interested in sponsoring the FNDN Series? Drop me a line!

Know a startup Head of People looking for answers 🙋 why not forward this to them for some instant karma? ✨

We’re trying something different this week.

I consider it an important part of my job to speak to as many People professionals as possible. 

I’m either:

Interviewing them for this publication. 
Or, I’m working with them directly through FNDN. 
Or, they’re speaking at or attending Startup People Summit.
Or, I strike up conversations because of the things I write and talk about.

(PS. this can be you, too. If you ever wanna chat about the state of the People profession, just hit reply and say hey)

If I had to guess, I’d say I speak to 100-150+ HR professionals in any given year (I should probably track this, but I don’t).

When you speak to that many people on an ongoing basis, you start to develop a bit of a sense for how things are going.

And if there was one way I’d sum up the vibe at the moment, it’d be that things feel just a little bit down.

I don’t want to justify that by sharing what feels like an unending list of shitty things going on in the world.

Instead, what I want to do is provide the antidote.

The thing that helps restore a bit of faith in humanity when it comes to the world of work.

When we had the pandemic and everyone was sick of being locked indoors and hearing about tragedy, there was a little light amidst the dreariness that was a show called Some Good News.

If you didn’t see it, the concept was simple. Each week, John Krasinski (of The Office, pictured below) broadcasted this homemade show, sharing uplifting global stories, celebrating everyday heroes, and otherwise sought to cheer up isolated viewers.

So here I am, committing mild copyright infringement, and coming to you with the Good News edition of FNDN Series.

I wanted to take a moment to stop and take stock of all the great things that are happening in the world for companies and workplaces. Too often there are heroes at these companies fighting and winning in the battle of making work great and their company great as a result of it. 

Time to put them in the spotlight.

Let me start with my favourite.

When Graham Walker agreed to sell Fibrebond (the manufacturing business his family founded in Louisiana) for US$1.7bn, he had one condition any buyer had to accept.

15% of the sale would be carved out for staff.

That carve-out came to roughly US$240m, split among 540 employees who owned no stock in the company.

It averages out at US$443,000 per worker.

These are people who stuck with the business through a factory fire, the dot-com bust and years of frozen salaries. When asked about the decision, Walker said: "I hope I'm 80 years old and get an email about how it's impacted someone."

What’s better than hearing about these kinds of initiatives, are the impacts they have.

Employees were able to stop living pay-check to pay-check, pay off mortgages, start their own businesses, clear credit-card balances, pay college tuition, or boost retirement savings, among many of the ways this gesture supported the workforce.

In February, Five Guys ran a buy-one-get-one burger deal for its 40th birthday. The promo went well. So well it hurt.

Sales jumped 130%, crashing the app and overwhelming stores to the point some had to close early, losing out on the benefits of the promo altogether.

Founder Jerry Murrell, 82, apologised to his staff before he apologised to the public. Then he took his own US$1.5M bonus and split it into $1,000 cheques across the chain's roughly 1,500 stores, for the crews who worked that day.

When it comes to CEO pay, I mostly dislike what I see.

It’s either skyrocketing salaries, bonuses despite crappy business results, or golden handshakes when they are removed.

Rarely do I see a CEO own a mistake and remedy it out of their own pocket. I’d love to see more of it.

Those two are the headline acts, but 2026 has produced a whole parade of companies sharing the upside with the people who built it.

Tesco announced more than 22,000 staff, most of them working in stores and distribution centres, would share up to £134m through its save-as-you-earn scheme. Over four times what it paid out in 2024. In chief people officer Emma Taylor's words: "when we succeed, we want our colleagues to share in that success."

Scottish law firm Burness Paull passed £100m turnover for the first time and gave every employee a bonus worth 10% of salary.

Waitrose operator John Lewis restored its staff bonus after four years following a turnaround of business financial results. The program awards a 2% payout to 70,000 employee-owners the company calls ‘partners’. This effort, while yes it’s small, signifies the efforts of these partners and their contribution towards the results achieved and shares that success.

SK hynix paid a record profit-share worth 2,964% of monthly base salary (about US$95,000 per employee on average) after hard-wiring 10% of operating profit into staff payouts every year.

And in Singapore, the banks moved within weeks of each other. DBS gave a S$1,000 bonus to over 23,000 junior staff worldwide, indexed to local purchasing power so it held the same real value in every market. Maybank made one-off payments to 800+ junior employees, designed around cost-of-living pressure, off the back of a 4.2% lift in profit.

Then there's UOB, which gave 6,000 junior staff an extra half-month of pay in a year headline profit fell 23%. A great example of companies supporting their workforce in targeted ways that matter.

A supermarket, a law firm, a department store, a chipmaker and three banks. In every case, the money deliberately landed on frontline and junior staff, the people bonuses often skip.

So if you've ever been told "that wouldn't work at a company like ours", 2026 says otherwise.

Many of the best stories this year though had nothing to do with money.

Transguard, a Dubai employer with a heavily blue-collar workforce, voluntarily launched adoption and guardianship leave of up to 85 days paid, matching its enhanced maternity leave and open to all genders.

Bank of America now spends more than US$250m a year covering GLP-1 medications for its people, up from zero only a few years ago. CEO Brian Moynihan's read: "We see a great impact on the employees." The bank pairs the coverage with health coaching, and is betting a healthier workforce pays for itself.

Virgin helped launch a campaign to mobilise 1,000 UK employers to hire people with criminal records, backed by its own track record of doing exactly that.

IBM's AI assistant now settles about 94% of routine HR requests. The company's response was to order every business unit to triple US entry-level hiring in 2026. CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux's logic: "If we don't continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in three to five years? There's no pipeline; the well simply dries up."

It’s nice to see companies taking responsibility for the future workforce we all share in.

And for the commercially-minded among you, Standard Chartered calculated it saves about US49,000 every time it reskills and redeploys an existing employee instead of hiring the same skills externally. More than US$55m saved so far.

That's the Good News edition for 2026.

Every episode of Some Good News also read out stories that viewers sent in, so here's my version.

If your company has done something this year that made work better for your people (big or small, public or not), hit reply and tell me about it.

I’d love to hear about it. Maybe I’ll even share these wins in an ongoing good news segment.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe.

The most interesting stuff from the week:

When you’re ready, here’s three ways I can help you:

1. Tools & resources
Resources and tools that give you what you need to build your own startup compensation practices.

2. Comp consulting
Building startup compensation practices that are clear, fair and competitive.

3. Startup People Summit
A 1-day annual event for People professionals in scaling companies. Creating the playbook for startup people practices. Grab recordings from past events, or subscribe to join the next summit.