Posted on 08/21/2014 6:34:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Casual Friday. Doughnuts at the staff meeting. Company pens for everyone!
While these ubiquitous work perks are nice — and may make going to the office a little easier on some days — they're probably not doing much for your financial life.
And that's precisely why some organizations have come to the conclusion that the best and most unique employee benefits don't just keep employees happy — they also put some extra cash into their pockets.
Just take a look at what these six savvy companies are offering their workers. Complimentary laundry service, anyone?
The perk: house cleaning The company: Evernote
After a long day at the office, the last thing you probably want to do is scrub your toilet — a predicament that San Francisco Bay area-based start-up Evernote totally gets.
That's why, in 2011, the company that creates apps to help users remember their ideas decided to help its employees remember to enjoy their free time — by hiring someone else to show up at their house with a mop and broom.
According to Ronda Scott, Evernote's director of communications, the company offers this unique employee benefit in order to keep staffers happy at work and at home. (Perhaps they've caught wind of the fact that being stressed outside the office often translates to less productivity at work.) "The benefits package at Evernote is designed to address the small stresses and inefficiencies of everyday life for our employees," Scott says.
To date, nearly half of their 250 employees are taking advantage of the opportunity to have their digs cleaned (for free!) twice a month.
How much employees save: $2,400 annually.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
Does a bear....well you know the rest.
Yes, on most of these, I’m sure.
no one will clean your house for $60 and you cannot get a manicure for $19
The reason why “benefits” were even introduced stemmed from salary freezes in the 1970s. Companies started bundling “benefits” packages to attract talent despite bad salaries. Now everyone expects to get benefits when they sign on with a company.
They recently took away a coffee bar staffed by actual baristas in our corporate office, and people howled like you wouldn’t believe. I can’t wait to see what happens when Obamacare forces HR to either rescind our corporate health insurance or severely curtail it. Wallpaper will be falling off of the walls from the collective screeching.
It’s not a benefit if it’s something you need. Just keep paying my salary, and I’ll deal with everything else, thanks.
As expected, they asked me to wear a uniform. I love it-- one less thing I have to spend my money on and one less source of complaints from certain whiny upper management types who thought I dressed too casually.
That’s nice, for as long as the startup stays in business.
And some people would prefer cash.
But if my company could get a group discount for housecleaning, I’d jump at that.
Sounds like a benefit we ALL are entitled to. When Obama comes in from his next round, he should make an executive order that puts all his illegal aliens to work doing the jobs Americans won’t do; cleaning their own homes. A great opportunity to check out subjects’, er citizens’ homes to see how many guns or how much booze they have, etc.
This idea has legs!
More often companies make it possible for employees to clean their own houses. Full-time.
“I can’t wait to see what happens when Obamacare forces HR to either rescind our corporate health insurance or severely curtail it. Wallpaper will be falling off of the walls from the collective screeching.
It’s not a benefit if it’s something you need. Just keep paying my salary, and I’ll deal with everything else, thanks.”
I manage a retail operation; our family-owned company is VERY generous to us, but I am 100% honest with my employees that I no longer have the hours (no more than 29 a week) to be generous with, and big raises are a thing of the past. Keeping our jobs IS the new ‘raise.’
I’m finding the more open I am with them, the more willing they are to do what needs to be done to keep our company up and running. We have a few tough-sledding years ahead of us - MAJOR road construction - and it’s going to be my top two or three people and me running the show until that nightmare ends.
And don’t even MENTION 0bamacare around here; long-time employees have lost their Flex Plans and I’ve lost $800/year in perks from it as well.
The LAST thing most NORMAL people here in The Heartland care about is a coffee bar versus a paycheck. :)
“be seeing you!”
quite frankly i don’t want agents of my employer snooping around my place under the guise of cleaning. they find something my boss doesn’t like (perhaps the wrong brand of sodapop?) and i could lose my job.
no thanx
Uh, it actually started in WW2.
Price and wage controls, business introduced the first “ benefit”, employer paid health care. And we can’t get rid of it to this day...
Feminists are demanding free tampons, why not free house cleanings?
I don't trust anyone but me to clean my house...I don't want someone spraying some Windex around the bathroom and calling it clean. And I prefer to do my own manis/pedis rather than go to a salon and get infected with dirty tools. I'm weird that way. ;)
all the people I had clean were because I had been in the hospital or had broken my foot, it is a lot of trouble and I like the way I clean better, but when you are laid up, with kids to care for, you gotta do what you gotta do
Housecleaning? Ha, more like snoops reporting back to the boss the contents of your medicine cabinet and bedside tables.
Spa? No, thanks. I don’t want a nail infection nor do I want some stranger rubbing all over me, ick.
Laundry service. Again, no thanks. I’d rather strangers not handle my inimate wear. Besides, it’s not like I have to go down to the rive and beat the clothes on rocks. I have those new fangled gadgets that do all the hard work for me. I think I can schedule in 15 minutes a week to put my laundry into the washer and drier and hang them up.
Overpriced sandwiches? No. I’d rather pack a pb&j and pocket the price of those sandwiches.
Decor? Gee whiz! Give me the 10K in cash and I’ll use whatever desk and chair Billy Bob sent off to storage.
Sure, I’ll take the extra week of vacation but I’d rather they put the $6k into my retirement. I haven’t spent $6k for all my vacations combined.
The only perk that makes me happy is a larger paycheck.
My first thought as well...
No thanks, I will take the doughnuts.
No doubt.
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