Culture Fail of the Month: GoDaddy
GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar and web-hosting company, is facing backlash for emailing employees with a holiday bonus announcement right before Christmas. Backlash? Well, as it turns out, the bonus wasn’t real – it was all part of a “test” to gauge how gullible GoDaddy’s employees are.
On December 14, GoDaddy employees received an email from happyholiday@godaddy.com which announced that “2020 has been a record year for GoDaddy, thanks to you! Though we cannot celebrate together during our annual Holiday Party, we want to show our appreciation and share a $650 one-time Holiday bonus!”
Employees were asked to submit personal information by December 18 to receive the bonus. Two days later, about 500 employees who did received another email from the company’s chief security officer, Demetrius Comes.
“You’re getting this email because you failed our recent phishing test,” Comes wrote. “You will need to retake the Security Awareness Social Engineering training.” So, no bonus and you’ve been sentenced to complete an eLearning course. What a perfect remembrance to a year most of us want to forget.
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Kevin is CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the world’s leading human capital research firm focusing on people practices that drive high performance. i4cp conducts more research in the field of HR than any other organization on the planet, highlighting next practices that organizations and HR executives should consider adopting.
Kevin is also the author of Culture Renovation®, an Amazon bestseller which debuted as the #1 new release in a dozen Amazon book categories. Drawing on data from one of the largest studies ever conducted on corporate culture, Culture Renovation™ details how high-performance organizations such as Microsoft, T-Mobile, 3M, AbbVie, Mastercard and many more have successfully changed organizational culture.
Kevin is currently on the board of Performitiv, and on the advisory boards of Guild Education and Sanctuary. Kevin was previously on the board of directors of KnowledgeAdvisors, a provider of human capital analytics software, which was purchased by Corporate Executive Board in March of 2014. Kevin was also the Chairman of Jambok, a social learning start-up company which was founded at Sun Microsystems and was purchased by SuccessFactors in March 2011. Additionally, Kevin served on the boards of Workforce Insight and Koru prior to their sales.
Kevin is on the board of Best Buddies Washington and helped establish the first office for Best Buddies in the state in 2019. Best Buddies is a nonprofit organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
Kevin was previously the Founder and the President of SumTotal Systems (NASDAQ: SUMT) which he helped create in 2003 by merging Click2learn (NASDAQ: CLKS) with Docent (NASDAQ: DCNT). The merger won Frost & Sullivan's Competitive Strategy Award in 2004.
Prior to the formation of SumTotal, Kevin was the Chairman & CEO of Click2learn, which was founded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Kevin helped take Click2learn public and engineered over a dozen acquisitions post-IPO. Prior to joining Click2learn, Kevin was president and founder of Oakes Interactive in Needham, MA. Oakes Interactive was purchased by Click2learn (then called Asymetrix) in 1997, prior to going public a year later.