The Perks We Love

Scenes from a DIY wellness retreat using my professional development funds

Andres and I have been having an ongoing conversation about a growing culture clash in his workplace around organizational culture and work ethic. Sometimes it’s framed as a generational divide, sometimes as a pandemic shift, and sometimes as a political cleaving. He is extremely frustrated by what he perceives as employees expecting to have fun, supportive work cultures without having to work hard or do good work. His take is that perks (extras beyond standard employee benefits) should be earned. I’m more of the mind that perks can make the work easier and can be motivating so that perks and performance reinforce each other.

This is part of a much larger conversation about what does it look like to not organize our lives around work and productivity, and what kinds of conditions support commitment, creativity, and excellence. Perks are not a solution for poor management, unjust conditions, incompatible hiring, and soul-less tasks. I have a list below of my favorite perks at MEV and I almost added to the list allowing the team to arrive earlier and stay longer at convening sites. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that wasn’t a perk. That flying in, having a team meeting, and beginning set-up all on the same day is actually inequitable and untenable from a disability justice frame, and providing people with the sufficient time needed should not be considered a “nice-to-have”. The way that we actually addressed the issue was by hiring a larger event team, which is a management decision about capacity and sustainability that cannot be solved or assuaged by a perk.

Having said that, we did offer perks that I think are worth sharing. As a team who didn’t run our own organization, there were limits to the types of employee benefits and salaries we were able to provide, but we did have authority to offer several perks that significantly improved our ability to do the work, supported a good quality of life for employees, and helped us practice our program values of humanity and equity. Here are some of my favorites I would love to see at more workplaces.

1. Summer Fridays. It’s exciting to see how workplaces are increasingly embracing the four day workweek. We never quite got there, but we did get excited about Summer Fridays every year. Starting with Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, we did not schedule meetings or deadlines on Fridays and we were not expected to work. Sometimes working on Friday was unavoidable or just easier for some people, so they would take a Summer Monday or at least a late start Monday to make up for it. My favorite use of Summer Fridays was to head to the beach and catch up on reading, but people frequently used them for long weekend getaways, volunteer days, and doing errands to free up the weekend.
2. Taking off the last two weeks of the year. I’m always surprised that more nonprofit organizations don’t do this. I know that year-end fundraising can be busy as well as bookkeeping if on a calendar year fiscal year, but exceptions can be made for urgent tasks rather than setting the baseline as everyone working during this time. Another former employer would rotate “on-call” duty during those dates so there would always be coverage in case of emergencies but no one had to work more than one day during the holiday season.
3. Flexible professional development. Each person had designated annual funds for professional development and we had a lot of flexibility to determine what would be most beneficial for us as individuals. We respected people’s ability to decide for themselves what would be most supportive and tried to hold the typical expenses of conferences and trainings as the floor rather than the ceiling. People frequently used their funds on typical expenses like coaching, workshops, and books, but also on Spanish classes, meditation and wellness retreats, professional headshots, and travel.
4. TSA Precheck / CLEAR. With all the work travel, this was definitely the perk that got the most use and made our lives exponentially better. On the flipside, this perk is only available to US citizens, US nationals, and permanent residents. Being convicted of certain types of felonies can also disqualify you.
5. Using our airline of choice. Prior to MEV, when I booked a flight for work, the expectation was that I choose the cheapest flight. There can be lots of critique of airline status programs, but as someone who used to fly twice a month for 5 years, being able to always fly my airline of choice, even when the ticket cost more, helped make travel so much more easeful, freeing up precious mental and emotional energy. Not worrying about my seat placement, being able to board early, knowing that my carry-on would make it into the cabin, usually being treated with a little more respect by airline employees, and sometimes getting the free upgrade made it significantly less stressful. I am only half joking when I say that losing my airline priority status will be the hardest loss in this transition.
6. Home office AND coworking options. People wanted both the ability to work from home and from an external space as needed. For all of us, working from home was a must-have as the most convenient option, so we covered home office expenses such as furniture and supplies. People also wanted to have the option to work outside of their home for multiple reasons, including a change of scenery, the ability to concentrate differently, having space for in-person meetings, to be in a different neighborhood, and to periodically free up the home space for other needs. I happened to live near a Raben office and it was great to have a shared space in Downtown LA, but this wasn’t the case for the rest of the team, so we covered memberships for coworking spaces.