Have work perks become too ‘paternalistic’?

In a con­tro­ver­sial update from Base­camp CEO Jason Fried, the com­pa­ny co-founder announced an end to polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions at work, 360 reviews and “pater­nal­is­tic” ben­e­fits. Accord­ing to Fried, the perks offered by the US soft­ware com­pa­ny, which includ­ed a fit­ness ben­e­fit, well­ness allowance and farmer’s mar­ket share, were essen­tial­ly telling employ­ees how to lead their lives.

Fried claims that, “by pro­vid­ing funds for cer­tain things, we’re get­ting too deep into nudg­ing peo­ple’s per­son­al, indi­vid­ual choic­es. So we’ve end­ed these ben­e­fits”. Instead, Base­camp will now give staff the mon­e­tary val­ue of the perks they were once offered. 

Work­place cul­ture expert and for­mer Twit­ter vice-pres­i­dent Bruce Dais­ley under­stands why some peo­ple would be reluc­tant to allow their employ­ers to make semi-moral or atti­tu­di­nal deci­sions on their behalf. 

He says: “Giv­ing some­one a gym mem­ber­ship effec­tive­ly means you are mak­ing a deci­sion for them. I can see how that’s a degree con­trol­ling. If your part­ner bought you gym mem­ber­ship you’d right­ful­ly take some offence at the sug­ges­tion being made and why you couldn’t make that deci­sion your­self.”

Employees still value perks

How­ev­er, Gau­tam Sah­gal, CEO of employ­ee expe­ri­ence plat­form Perk­box, believes the announce­ment was sur­pris­ing­ly timed. 

The com­pa­ny con­duct­ed research into the state of employ­er and employ­ee well­be­ing dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. They found there is now a “greater appre­ci­a­tion for the mean­ing­ful things that mon­ey can’t buy, and an even greater intol­er­ance for busi­ness­es and brands that have failed to sup­port their staff and cus­tomers at a time where greater empa­thy and human­i­ty is need­ed”.

Although Sah­gal agrees it should not be the role of an employ­er to “pon­tif­i­cate and lec­ture its employ­ees on how best to live their lives”, he adds: “Any employ­er should pro­vide an effec­tive and rel­e­vant engage­ment sys­tem that con­sid­ers the inter­ests, tastes and lifestyles of its work­force to ensure the ben­e­fits sys­tem offers some­thing for every­one.”

Offer­ing an entic­ing array of ben­e­fits is still an impor­tant point of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion for employ­ees too. Accord­ing to Drewberry’s Employ­ee Ben­e­fits Sur­vey, which ques­tioned 2,000 work­ers at UK SMEs, 22.4% said that offer­ing perks helped to attract them to employ­ers when look­ing for new jobs.

Some of the more in-demand ben­e­fits includ­ed flex­i­ble work­ing hours and pri­vate health insur­ance. And despite Fried’s assump­tion that employ­ees no longer want pater­nal­is­tic perks, 51.1% of employ­ees sur­veyed said they’d like to see their com­pa­ny intro­duce ben­e­fits that help them man­age their health and well­be­ing.

Emma Par­ry, human resource man­age­ment pro­fes­sor at Cran­field School of Man­age­ment, believes that good employ­ers have an oblig­a­tion to look after their peo­ple in a holis­tic sense and should empow­er their employ­ees to make pos­i­tive life choic­es in regards to their men­tal, phys­i­cal and finan­cial health. “It’s about empow­er­ing peo­ple to make healthy choic­es and look after them­selves,” she says. “No one is forc­ing peo­ple to take up a gym mem­ber­ship.” 

Choice is key

On one lev­el, per­cep­tions of cer­tain types of ben­e­fits have changed. The office-based perks, which were once in high demand, are less desir­able for employ­ees who have spent the major­i­ty of the past year work­ing from home. 

Where you may have once seen com­pa­nies offer­ing free food, pool tables and on-site enter­tain­ment, employ­ees can now choose from unlim­it­ed annu­al leave, sub­scrip­tions to well­ness apps and vaca­tion funds. Research from online jobs search plat­form Glass­door revealed 57% of employ­ees now felt that office-cen­tric perks were less impor­tant to them. 

This means offer­ing employ­ees a broad choice is also impor­tant, espe­cial­ly for those work­ing in mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional teams. Janine Cham­ber­lin, UK coun­try man­ag­er at LinkedIn, says: “Perks offered to par­ents may not be rel­e­vant for the younger peo­ple in your organ­i­sa­tion. It’s impor­tant to be mind­ful about offer­ing a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ben­e­fits.”

Benefits versus financial rewards

Ken Char­man, CEO of UFlexRe­ward, takes a dif­fer­ent approach. The tech­nol­o­gy start­up, which was spun-out from Unilever, made the deci­sion to stop offer­ing ben­e­fits in order to max­imise the finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion offered to its employ­ees.

The deci­sion was also made in an attempt to be more open and fair about pay, as Char­man adds: “Most organ­i­sa­tions do not include their ben­e­fits in pay gap and pay ratio cal­cu­la­tions, which car­ries a risk that these perks can be used to con­ceal bias.”

How­ev­er, there are fears that, when ben­e­fits are removed, employ­ees may not see their true val­ue reflect­ed in their salaries. Sah­gal says: “Finan­cial incen­tives and bonus schemes are nice to have and sweet­en the deal but there are a myr­i­ad of stud­ies which show how lit­tle they help in terms of enhanc­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or stem­ming attri­tion.” 

Ulti­mate­ly, Basecamp’s exper­i­ment with the removal of its ben­e­fits did not last long. Although Fried warned that “some changes take time to steep, set­tle in, and get acquaint­ed with”, events quick­ly spi­ralled. A com­pa­ny-wide Zoom meet­ing, aimed at address­ing employ­ee con­cerns about the pol­i­cy changes — most of which cen­tred around the restric­tion of polit­i­cal dis­cus­sions — cul­mi­nat­ed in a third of Basecamp’s staff resign­ing. 

For Saghal, there should have been no rea­son for Basecap’s range of perks to be con­sid­ered pater­nal­is­tic “unless it was com­mu­ni­cat­ed in such a way that makes staff feel like it’s manda­to­ry or judge­men­tal”. He adds: “Indeed, if that is a con­cern, then there are much big­ger issues relat­ing to com­pa­ny cul­ture that need to be imme­di­ate­ly addressed than the mere imple­men­ta­tion or rescind­ing of a well­ness ben­e­fit.”