[quietbritishjim]

What you're describing sounds totally different from the wellness program described in the article. What the article describes is something that seems to be totally targetted at individuals. If you desire them, and get paid enough, you could just get them yourself - there's no reason for the company to get involved.

What you're describing are more like team building. Enforced lunches or dinners with coworkers are not just about directly rewarding you with free food, but also enforcing some informal time with team members that you might not choose to spend time with outside of work (or even those you might but maybe wouldn't normally make time for). In many cases it's not even disguised that this is the goal. Although I might not always be a fan of spending time with some of those people, I see the benefit to the business and even myself and it's quite orthogonal from compensation.

[johnchristopher]

In none of the job I had did my colleagues discuss work at lunch. It was and is a kind of big no no. Might be a cultural thing.

[varispeed]

In many workplaces lunch breaks are not paid. I view my lunch break as a sacred time for myself and as an introvert I use this time to recharge. Unfortunately employers don't see these schemes as discriminatory. Any team building stuff means that HR didn't do a great job at hiring and since often it is difficult to let people go, they do that to "patch things up".

Regarding optional programs, sure these exist - unfortunately you are unable to get a cash equivalent if you don't want to use it.

[pc86]

> Any team building stuff means that HR didn't do a great job at hiring

This is just wrong. Team building has a place like anything else and reasonable people can disagree about how much is too much.

[quietbritishjim]

While I disagree with this, that's not the point. My actual point was that your comment is off topic for this article, and that still stands.