DETROIT, Feb 11 - Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley informed employees at a town hall on Wednesday that companywide bonuses will be established at 130%, according to four people familiar with the matter. Company officials attributed the larger payout largely to gains in initial vehicle quality, the measure that tracks repair incidents during the first 90 days of a vehicle's ownership.
Those sources said the initial-quality metric is at its strongest level in roughly a decade. Companywide bonuses at Ford are calculated from a suite of annual performance metrics the automaker sets each year. Those metrics determine the baseline payout available to all salaried employees; a result above 100% signifies the firm exceeded its targets. Individual performance ratings can increase or decrease the bonus each employee receives.
The bonus program covers Ford's global salaried workforce, which is approximately 75,000 employees, the people said. The automaker ties pay outcomes to a mix of quality and financial measures, with the objectives reassessed on an annual basis.
By way of recent context, Ford set its payouts at 84% in 2023 and at 69% in 2024. At that time, some of the company goals included EV sales and growth in vehicle connected services. The specific targets for 2025 have not been publicly disclosed, though a person familiar with the matter said 2025 goals are roughly the same as those used in 2024.
The mechanics of Ford's bonus plan mean the 130% setting signals the company exceeded the combination of metrics it established for the year. How much each salaried worker ultimately receives will still vary with individual performance evaluations, even with the elevated companywide multiplier.
Sources speaking about the town hall and the company's internal compensation framework requested anonymity. They described the improvement in early ownership repairs as the principal driver behind the decision to boost the payout level.
Because Ford's bonus framework is explicitly tied to annually defined objectives, the precise combination of measures and their relative weightings change from year to year. The referenced inclusion of EV sales and growth in connected services in prior years demonstrates that compensation targets can span product quality, sales volume in specific vehicle segments, and monetizable vehicle services.
For the roughly 75,000 salaried workers eligible for the program, the 130% setting represents a material increase from the recent payout levels reported for 2023 and 2024. The company and the sources did not provide a breakdown of how improved initial quality translated into the numerical step-up in the multiplier, nor did they publish the internal target thresholds for the current year.