[dpandey]

Small perks like free lunches, gym membership or a massage every month are huge in making employees happy.

We're a seed funded company and provide free lunches to our employees. We also reimburse up to 100$ a month for fitness/gym memberships. Some of my friends working in large organizations don't get these perks, and point out that they're wasteful of a company that is cash flow negative and trying to conserve capital.

What most people with such mindset don't realize is how valuable inspired people can be. For employees to be inspired, they must do work they find meaningful and they must be appreciated and challenged. But they also must realize the company genuinely cares about them. Then they want to give back to the company; they want to exceed expectations because they love how the company cares about them.

Now you need to show care to employees on an everyday basis, but one amazing way to show it is with perks like these. 100$ a month for gym or 200$ a month for lunch per employee is not outrageous if you compare that with how much you pay them every month. It's almost miniscule. Also, in most startups at least, they're getting paid below market rate in exchange for equity etc. Not having to worry about lunch or gym everyday makes a huge difference psychologically.

The one situation where you can justify cutting perks is when the company is going through a genuine crisis, cutting the perk is critical to get through, and you let everyone know this is temporary and it's just something we all must do to get through this crisis. Otherwise, instead of trying to cut soda out, the management needs to focus on growing revenue and profits and ask themselves why they're not succeeding there as much as they'd like to. Hiding behind a soda cut isn't going to fix the issue.

PS: I used to worked at Salesforce where we got several days a year off just to go volunteer time at non-profits. You'd be amazed at how much employees love the company for allowing them to do things non-work related that they're passionate about just a few days a year while getting paid for it. It says that the company has a warm heart. The impact shows up in the company's relentless growth year after year. Same with companies like Costco. Showing care for employees has an outsized impact on the bottomline.

[AceyMan]

Just a brief +1 to this: I'm a fit guy who's traditionally been a fairly regular blood donor. My newest (and still current) firm has its offices a couple blocks from a permanent blood donation center, and since it's so easy to donate I started to do platelet donations, primarily since the refractory interval is much shorter than other donation types.

However, as some may know, apheresis takes considerably longer than other donation procedures (~ 2h45m), and at the time I had a PHB manager who wouldn't allow me the time to donate as often as I was able (and willing).

This really soured me on his leadership. An attitude such as you cite at Salesforce would have fostered in me a much stronger sense of symbiosis between me and the company.

So instead of "getting more work out" of me (his intent), instead he got an irritated employee who had little to no inclination to go above or beyond the minimum (wrt what he asked or expected, not in general).

I think my experience and attitude is a classic example of strict bean counting and lack of soft skills backfiring on companies (or managers) with similar methods.

[ChuckMcM]

I tend to agree with this perspective but I don't think anyone has managed to actually create an experiment to study it. (perhaps if two startups in the same space had diametrically opposed benefits you could use their market share or productivity as a comparison metric).

There is also something tribal/instinctual about sharing food. Buying lunch two or three times a week for the team will bond them better paying them cash. And a well bonded team is a higher performance team. That you can measure with your sprint planning. The downside is that it is disproportionately impactful when you take food away. When Crawford Beverage (HR VP at Sun) discontinued the company beer bash (and it was just popcorn, chips, maybe some vegetables with ranch dressing and beer, not even a lot of food) it permanently scarred morale.

[davidw]

> the company genuinely cares about them

They don't though, in most cases. All that stuff is just window dressing. I haven't thought about it a lot, but genuinely caring might mean not firing someone going through a rough patch, when their productivity is pretty bad.

[dpandey]

I'd say that when you've worked at a company > 6 months, you know if your manager cares about you. You know if the management cares about you. Doesn't take much to figure that out.

I think there are 1-1 and public ways of showing care. When an employee has a performance issue and is going through something rough, you have a private conversation, nobody else needs to know (unless they're impacted/frustrated and you let them know some of it to make them cut some slack) and the employee is taken care of.

Perks are a public way of taking a stand and saying I care about people and will provide these perks and won't take them away except in the direst of situations. Providing perks won't make people love you, but it shows you care. They're nice to get and show thoughtfulness. Especially if you're not obnoxious otherwise.

[davidw]

Thinking out loud: maybe "giving without expecting anything in return" ? Perks and compensation are things you mostly expect to get something back from.

Something genuinely nice/caring at the place I work now was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving where they just told everyone to go home after lunch and enjoy the long weekend.

[dpandey]

That's a great example.

[KON_Air]

It really sounds like something between modernified Fordism and in-setting cyberpunk horror story.