Low unemployment and high demand for talented workers in the current job market has lead to an interesting trend in recruitment: perk mania. As more and more companies struggle to find and keep talented employees, businesses are finding it necessary to offer a wide variety of innovative extras. Here are a few of the creative perks potential employees are being offered:
- Flying lessons
- Hammocks and free soft drinks in the employee lounge
- A night on the town ($200 restaurant gift certificate and limo service for five hours)
- Company-paid meals on the job
- Inexpensive or free bus rides anytime for a year
- Limo rides to and from work for top teenage workers
- Leased BMW paid for by the company
- Free on-the-job massages
- Happy hour
- 24-hour fitness facility
- Pinball room
- Tickets to Broadway shows
- Lunchtime car washes
- Dry cleaning pick-up or delivery
- Grocery shopping service
- Snow-shoveling service
- Four-day work week
- On-site day care
- Up to $1,200 every year to take any type of class (examples include Tai Chi, sculpture and funk aerobics).
SOURCE: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., Chicago, Illinois
Workforce, October 1998, Vol. 77, No. 10, p. 22.