Perks and benefits
I read Tony Faddell’s “Build” last year, and I thought a lot of it would stick with me.
Only one thing has truly stuck: Perks and benefits, and why companies should provide benefits but beware of “perks” like the plague.
In Faddell’s telling, perks—like free lunch or dog baths—are just things people get used to. And once they’re used to it, you can’t get rid of it, but they also don’t view it as special. It’s become a “right.”
That rings mostly true to me? But now that I’m at a different company, it also has me thinking about what I value in perks and benefits.
The perk I keep coming back to is an “unlimited book budget.” All the L&D you can read. I reliably spent a couple hundred dollars per year on books like Build, and got to bring what I learned back to my team.
It was a good one!
