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Perking up work with gyms, Botox, parking, flex-time
July 16, 2011, Saturday
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ACCORDING to BusinessDictionary.com, perks are "privileges granted to employees in addition to their salaries and benefits," and may include such things as "the company car, vacations, reserved parking spaces, spacious offices, private dining and washroom facilities, etc."
It's the "etc" that seems to be changing with the times. Until recently, most discussions of perks focused on what high-tech companies in Silicon Valley were offering their employees: free gourmet meals, 24-hour gym, yoga classes, on-site nutritionist, massage therapy, concierge service, discounted artwork, auto detailing, even Botox injections and bring-a-pet-to-work day.
The idea was often two-fold: (a) make the company an attractive place to work, and (b) make it easy for employees to work long hours - without worrying about leaving to eat, get to the dry cleaners or exercise. Yet the question arises: If the idea is to encourage employees to work harder, then are free meals really perks?
As Steven E. Gross, a senior partner at Mercer Human Resource Consulting, notes, "Some people would view that not as a perk, but as serfdom."
Clearly, perks are a tricky subject. As companies simultaneously try to shake off the recession, keep costs low, retain valued employees and recruit talented new ones, they need to understand what perks are and what perks are meant to do.
Perks are different from benefits, which many people consider to be an essential part of a compensation package that includes such things as health and dental coverage.
Perks are more discretionary, and can be offered to individuals either as a way to entice them to join the company, or as a way to reward them as they move up the ranks.
Wharton management professor Iwan Barankay defines a perk as "what makes a job more enjoyable for an employee. It can be a nicer office, a hard-to-get parking space, a seat next to a window or a new computer. The essential thing is that this perk is scarce, and management has some discretion over how to allocate it."
Interviews with Wharton faculty and HR experts suggest that perks are especially valuable when they "give employees the chance to customize their own employment arrangement," says Wharton management professor Adam Grant. "Perks can help employees feel uniquely supported and valued by their employers. Think about an employment contract as a restaurant menu: An employer offers an employee a set of options he or she can choose from that are of similar cost to the employer."
Examples of options that give employees more autonomy over how their jobs are structured include the opportunity to telecommute one day a week or to negotiate degrees of scheduling flexibility.
According to Bill Driscoll, northeastern district president for staffing firm Robert Half International, "We now have four generations in the workforce" at the same time - the Silent Generation (approximate ages: 66 to 85), the baby boomers (ages 47 to 65), Generation X (ages 30 to 46) and Generation Y (also known as millennials; under 30).
Driscoll points to a Robert Half survey released in January that asked executives to identify perks they plan to offer, or already offer, in 2011.
Subsidized training or education came in highest (33 percent) followed by flexible work hours/telecommuting (27 percent), mentoring programs (25 percent), matching gift programs for charitable contributions (15 percent), on-site perks such as child care, dry cleaning, fitness centers and cafeterias (11 percent), subsidized transport (10 percent), sabbaticals (8 percent) and housing or relocation assistance (7 percent).
As for the issue of generational diversity in today's workplace, Grant points to what he says is a surprising conclusion in a study that came out in March 2010 in the Journal of Management, namely that "the differences between the work values of different generations are very small."
At a "fundamental level, people want the same things out of work; they just have different ideas about how to get there," Grant adds.
He notes two caveats to Twenge's findings.
First, "we know that many members of Gen Y are less willing to delay gratification and like more immediate rewards than their predecessors." Second, Gen Y scores slightly higher in terms of how important leisure time is to them.
(Adapted from China Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. To read the original version, please visit: http://bit.ly/rt4isg)
It's the "etc" that seems to be changing with the times. Until recently, most discussions of perks focused on what high-tech companies in Silicon Valley were offering their employees: free gourmet meals, 24-hour gym, yoga classes, on-site nutritionist, massage therapy, concierge service, discounted artwork, auto detailing, even Botox injections and bring-a-pet-to-work day.
The idea was often two-fold: (a) make the company an attractive place to work, and (b) make it easy for employees to work long hours - without worrying about leaving to eat, get to the dry cleaners or exercise. Yet the question arises: If the idea is to encourage employees to work harder, then are free meals really perks?
As Steven E. Gross, a senior partner at Mercer Human Resource Consulting, notes, "Some people would view that not as a perk, but as serfdom."
Clearly, perks are a tricky subject. As companies simultaneously try to shake off the recession, keep costs low, retain valued employees and recruit talented new ones, they need to understand what perks are and what perks are meant to do.
Perks are different from benefits, which many people consider to be an essential part of a compensation package that includes such things as health and dental coverage.
Perks are more discretionary, and can be offered to individuals either as a way to entice them to join the company, or as a way to reward them as they move up the ranks.
Wharton management professor Iwan Barankay defines a perk as "what makes a job more enjoyable for an employee. It can be a nicer office, a hard-to-get parking space, a seat next to a window or a new computer. The essential thing is that this perk is scarce, and management has some discretion over how to allocate it."
Interviews with Wharton faculty and HR experts suggest that perks are especially valuable when they "give employees the chance to customize their own employment arrangement," says Wharton management professor Adam Grant. "Perks can help employees feel uniquely supported and valued by their employers. Think about an employment contract as a restaurant menu: An employer offers an employee a set of options he or she can choose from that are of similar cost to the employer."
Examples of options that give employees more autonomy over how their jobs are structured include the opportunity to telecommute one day a week or to negotiate degrees of scheduling flexibility.
According to Bill Driscoll, northeastern district president for staffing firm Robert Half International, "We now have four generations in the workforce" at the same time - the Silent Generation (approximate ages: 66 to 85), the baby boomers (ages 47 to 65), Generation X (ages 30 to 46) and Generation Y (also known as millennials; under 30).
Driscoll points to a Robert Half survey released in January that asked executives to identify perks they plan to offer, or already offer, in 2011.
Subsidized training or education came in highest (33 percent) followed by flexible work hours/telecommuting (27 percent), mentoring programs (25 percent), matching gift programs for charitable contributions (15 percent), on-site perks such as child care, dry cleaning, fitness centers and cafeterias (11 percent), subsidized transport (10 percent), sabbaticals (8 percent) and housing or relocation assistance (7 percent).
As for the issue of generational diversity in today's workplace, Grant points to what he says is a surprising conclusion in a study that came out in March 2010 in the Journal of Management, namely that "the differences between the work values of different generations are very small."
At a "fundamental level, people want the same things out of work; they just have different ideas about how to get there," Grant adds.
He notes two caveats to Twenge's findings.
First, "we know that many members of Gen Y are less willing to delay gratification and like more immediate rewards than their predecessors." Second, Gen Y scores slightly higher in terms of how important leisure time is to them.
(Adapted from China Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn. To read the original version, please visit: http://bit.ly/rt4isg)
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