Employees set pay at hedge fund

Can you drop out of meetings to watch the match, choose your own salary, and decide when you finish work? You probably can if you work at Semco's hedge fund.

"What impact did letting staff watch the World Cup have on the fund? All we know is it was a $100m fund and now it is worth $1.2bn," Ricardo Semler, CEO of Semco, Brazil, told City AM.

Rather like pupils at Summerhill, the liberal English school set up in the 1920s where students decide whether to go to lessons, Semler's staff are given considerable autonomy. Workers can choose their own bosses, who they work for, how much they want to be paid (within limits), and when and where they work.

At least 20% of employees decide how much they want to be paid once they have been provided with market rate information for their position, as well as details of salaries of everyone else in the company - managers included.

And as long as the work gets done, Semler has no time for rules about how long people work, or face time at the office. "We have no idea how many hours people work or what they really do and it is irrelevant because when something needs to be done I will be just as impatient as another company manager if it is not."

Why would he do this, when everybody knows that time is money?

Semler says work should only be one part of a person's life, and that giving people more freedom over their work makes for satisfied employees who produce far better returns.

Tell that to the MD.