There are several ways Patagonia goes beyond what would typically be the traditional rewards, benefits, pay. A part of it's embedded in the culture at Patagonia. We have on-site childcare. It's really around a philosophy that you can parent all the time.
We have a culture of if the surf is up then go surf. So we, you know, allow those things to happen. We have a lot of people who want to do things for the environment, so after a year, if you've been with the company, we'll pay for two months of leave so that you can volunteer. We recently put one in place called 980, where we close the office every other Friday. So a lot of our other things that are not traditional tend to be around how are we leaning into the people that we're hiring and what matters to them.
We try to offer a menu which allows people to kind of pick the benefit that matters most to them. We never have a lack of feedback. They're very vocal, but we also asked. So, for example, when we implemented the new schedule, we partnered with a local university on a pre- and post-survey to understand how did that impact you. We weren't just interested in productivity.
We wanted to understand how did this impact your life. And overwhelmingly, we found people were spending more time outdoors, taking longer vacations. They had better relationships with their spouse and their children. And oddly enough, they were more productive.
When we started rethinking rewards at Patagonia, one of the things that we did was separate base pay and bonus. So if you have a great year, you're going to get a great bonus. And then we look at base pay separately.
If you increased your skills to market over that past year, you're going to get a change to your base pay. And it's been really well received at Patagonia. When I got to Patagonia, the performance management system was also very traditional.
It didn't match the culture at all. We looked at it, we decided let's really tap into the power of the crowd. So tap into the feedback of the people that matter in terms of how are you doing on a regular basis. We layered in quarterly feedback check-in sessions using that feedback. We also got rid of the rating system.
So the combination of the changes we made in performance management connected to the changes in compensation have really led to a lot more efficient way of handling performance. So what is the impact of all this? The actual outcomes of HR? By having this brand that really aligns with our customers and that we stick to, we have more applicants than we can go through typically.
We have ridiculously low turnover, so we don't spend the money most people spend on training, ramp up, and even recruiting. We have women represented at every level of management, including a female CEO, and an equal number of men and women on the board of directors. It really isn't about public or private or big or small. To some extent, I really think it's about courage.
If you have a value and you truly believe that is a value of the company, then you better support it ridiculously. And if you don't have a way of supporting it ridiculously within an HR policy, a program, a benefit, a reward, I question whether it's a value.