ASML CEO Ties Pay to Staff Morale After Survey Drop

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet is putting his own paycheck on the line to fix employee morale. The chip giant's engagement index fell to seventy-three and a half percent this year from seventy-eight percent in 2025. Over thirty-eight thousand staff took the survey during a disruptive year that also brought plans to cut seventeen hundred positions. The company posted a record net profit of nine point six billion euros in 2025 thanks to the global AI boom. Fouquet wrote in a memo that a new Workplace Experience Index will now influence leadership pay. The metric draws from six questions covering trust in leaders and psychological safety. Other major firms like IBM and Aviva have tied engagement to executive pay targets in the past. ASML relies heavily on specialized talent because it is the world's only supplier of EUV lithography machines. Replacing those engineers costs massive amounts of money as tech sector layoffs climb globally.