KKR shared profits from a big sale with employees. Here's what they're doing with the windfall.

Bonnie Stewart, a longtime ISC employee, shortly after finding out about her payout.

In his 12 years on the job, Justin Berk, a 44-year-old product manager at an insurance-tech company, had seen his employer get bought and sold twice. All he had received in return was a "pat on the back" at a company meeting."A pat on the back is nice, but it doesn't pay the bills," he said.When KKR sold his company, Integrated Specialty Coverages, to Onex Partners, the company meeting was much more significant: Berk received 30 months of his salary as a cash bonus as part of a KKR initiative to share its private equity profits with workers at its portfolio companies.Berk and other long-tenured employees, like Bonnie Stewart, the director of operations for ISC subsidiary Gaslamp Insurance Services, received 30 months of their salaries. The payouts were announced at a September 18 meeting in San Diego's iconic Hotel Del Coronado, following a Champagne toast in celebration of the sale, in which KKR said it delivered a 2.5 return.Stewart said that if she could "bottle up the feeling" of receiving that windfall, she "wouldn't sell it." The change in mindset that came with the program, starting at the foundational level of renaming "employees" as "owners," and the hard work that led to the profitable sale, were worth even more."I don't think Travis Kelce would sell the feeling of winning a Super Bowl," Stewart said. "He earned that. His team earned that."