Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has built a distinctive approach to employee retention around a simple principle: give staff a meaningful financial stake in the hedge fund manager’s success, according to a report by Forbes.
The firm, which oversees about $35bn, has only around 48 employees, but Ackman says every member of staff owns millions of dollars of Pershing Square stock — from senior investment professionals to reception and cleaning staff.
“We believe in taking care of our people,” Ackman said in a recent interview.
The broad ownership structure is part of a wider effort to align employees with the performance of the business and create a culture where staff have a strong incentive to remain at the firm.
Ackman says Pershing Square has not experienced an “undesired departure” among its small workforce, which he attributes partly to the combination of financial participation, benefits and the firm’s culture.
Pershing Square requires employees to work from the office five days a week for most of the year, but takes a markedly different approach during July and August.
During those months, employees have greater flexibility over where they work, with members of the investment team traditionally relocating together to the Hamptons, either renting or using their own homes.
The firm also provides benefits aimed at supporting employees’ health and wellbeing, including meals, gym access and comprehensive healthcare coverage.
Ackman argues that these measures create a stronger sense of ownership and make employees less likely to look elsewhere.
The firm’s small size is also central to its model. Ackman believes hiring should focus not only on investment ability but also on character and interpersonal qualities.
He has described his preference for recruiting highly capable people whom colleagues genuinely enjoy working alongside.
The result, he argues, is a relatively lean organisation capable of managing a substantial pool of capital.
Ackman’s approach has centred on concentrated investments and an active role in influencing the companies in which Pershing invests. The model has helped turn the firm into a multibillion-dollar asset manager despite maintaining a relatively small workforce.
Ackman also believes artificial intelligence could fundamentally change how individuals access expertise and compete in the workplace.
He expects AI to have a substantial impact on sectors such as healthcare and education, arguing that increasingly sophisticated models can make specialist knowledge accessible to a much wider audience.
Rather than relying exclusively on traditional forms of learning, Ackman believes people will increasingly use AI systems as personalised sources of education and expertise.
For the Pershing Square founder, that represents one of the technology’s most important economic implications: sophisticated intelligence is becoming available to a far larger proportion of the population at little or no cost.
The same principle could increasingly apply to investment firms, where access to advanced AI tools may augment the capabilities of small, highly skilled teams.
