In the knowledge economy, a company’s chief asset is its employees, so it has to spend a great deal of effort attracting the right people, then keeping them motivated, creative, and engaged. But startups looking to become the “next Google” have learned the wrong lesson if they think they can buy a healthy company culture one perk at a time.
It’s true that Google does shower its employees with perks (including on-site showers). However, the company actually takes a more nuanced approach to employee satisfaction.
In his book Work Rules!, Lazlo Bock, Google’s SVP of People Ops, discusses the analysis Google applies to employee benefits. Each perk is viewed in terms of monetary cost and benefit, to the employee as well as to some overarching organizational objective. Obvious as this may seem, it’s a far cry from the spending for spending’s sake attitude so pervasive in the startup world.
