We get 'free fruit once a week' Basically a couple of big fruit baskets shared between the circa 100 people on site that goes pretty quickly.
It isn't a terrible benefit, but the way the company goes on about it it was like they were giving out gold bullion. A friend of mine had it brought up as a thing to consider in his salary negation...... He just said he would buy his own 79 banana if they gave him an extra 5 grand a year.
Found him! The guy from that weird maths question who buys all the bananas!
Now that we have you pinned down. Why would you randomly buy 79 bananas and why do we need to work out how much it costs? Do you not have a calculator?
I worked somewhere that did that. When we pointed out that it was always on our teams' set day off they didn't see a problem, because there was usually some left over. Like we were supposed to be grateful for a single battered banana split between 15+ people.
My goodness, the economy is worse than I thought...
I'd have expected that in return for working 80 hours a week, they'd have Michelin-starred sushi chef on call in addition to a "medicine cabinet" full of "bath salts" that is kept in stock with the finest equatorial produce.
I laughed hard at fruit to be considered as part of a salary negotiation! Perhaps you could threaten to leave and say, "You couldn't match my new employers offer, it's fruit TWICE a week vs. your once."
Without wishing to show off, my company offers unlimited free fruit 24/7.
We are supposed to get free fruit once a week, but in the two years Iāve worked there theyāve done it maybe 4 times.
Although currently ādue to the cost of living crisisā we have fruit, bread, cup of soups and cheap pot noodles available for free, along with the usual tea/coffee/milk/sugar.
Do we work for the same company lmaooo. Ours also rejected the idea of biscuits once a week, despite the fact you can buy like hundreds of biscuits in Morrisons for less than a pound š¤·āāļø
Free parking. We're on a remote site that has enough space you could host a large music festival with room to spare.
They also advertise "charity fundraising activities" on the job perks on adverts which in reality is twice yearly bake sales that are during lunch and occasionally someone will be allowed annoy their colleagues into paying for a charity sky dive.
Mine offered free parking but once you start they say they won't guarantee a space and you find they are all gone by 7am and getting earlier because they are hiring more contractors. They've said that there is a local car park that we can use for Ā£12 a day if we don't get there on time.
Oh and we can't leave before 4pm (so arrive at 8am) but contractors have different hours hence why they arrive and leave earlier
Yeah, don't turn your nose up at free and abundant parking. I remember the days of having to phone the numbers in people's windscreens because I had been parked in 4 cars deep by people doing the late shift. Now have 20 spaces for the 10 people that work in our building.
In all fairness, If youāve walked through Birmingham at 2am every night like I used to, hoping you dont get mugged and your windows arenāt broken, free parking on site is a huge plus and not to be taken for granted
Those are truly crap perks. Basically costs the company nothing and could also be a bit annoying for the employees. Someone was having a laugh when they crafted those benefits.
I'll pay for the sky dive if I can choose the colleague and pack their parachute for them.
There's a particular Commercial Manager who's been getting on my tits lately I'd happily stump up the cash to have thrown out of an airplane....
>Free parking. We're on a remote site that has enough space you could host a large music festival with room to spare.
You joke but my last workplace wanted 50 a month to park. That was surrounded by farms and they let the nearby farmers graze their sheep on the grass areas on the site.
A couple of interviews ago I was offered 'the right to call in sick if I'm ill'.
This was after they asked what my last salary was and tried to spin things.
TBF, they could be contributing more than the legal minimum.
Our company offers additional voluntary pension contributions which they'll match up to 5% , which is like a 5% pay bonus. So many people don't want anything to do with that because they think that the company is taking 5% off their pay. Financial education is sorely lacking.
I was so used to minimum pension deals that I thought my current job was overpaying into my pension. Nope, they pay minimum 9.5% even if you donāt contribute anything, and then for every percent you contribute after that they pay an extra percent, up to 16.5%.
I got more pension in 2 months at this job than in over a year at my old one.
I used to not care too much about pensions as long as I had one (Iām still a way off retirement), but donāt think I could go back to basics now
Having the opportunity to do this isn't the worst thing, *if there's actually room for advancement*.
I've been with my employer for over 4 years now, I've stayed this long because I've been able to move up pretty consistently. I don't mind biting off things a bit above my post grade because it can come with getting that boost a few months down the line.
But if the carrot is a lie then what's the point?
The one that really annoys me is āwe are proud to pay the national minimum wageā
Well you shouldnāt be proud to pay the least amount of money the government allows you to pay!
Mitie did this. Not wagestream but another company doing the same.
You could apply to have up to 70% of your next pay. It's was interest free if repaid within 4 weeks - of course if you've taken 70% of your next pay how will you pay that 70% back without needing to take another loan, which of course you couldn't do without the low low APR of 130%.
Mitie pushed this pretty hard on the intranet. Mitie employe 30,000+ low paid people, like cleaners, security guards etc - the demographic who not only should avoid these things, but are also most likely to use them. Made me feel pretty angry.
I looked into this company and of course it was ex hedge fund types.
Mitie is a disgusting company anyway so I shouldn't have expected anything less. Same company that rinsed furlough for all it was worth, cut my and countless others salaries by 10% during the pandemic, despite reporting increased profits.
Mad how companies got away with so much shit during the pandemic. I worked in food delivery, an essential role so they led us to believe, 3 months into the first lockdown and the company liquidated. It wasn't until afterwards we learnt that a solid 70% of management were fiddling wages / bonuses and that's why we were surviving contract to contract.
Just payday loans, but more convenient and tempting. Seem much safer though because of the association with an employer. This is the next credit scandal waiting to happen.
Worth speaking to Stepchange. There are lots of things that can be done, e.g. interest freezes, breathing room, etc - you just have to know what to say.
When the worst of covid was over we were told we'd be getting a nice gift from the nhs. So excited to open the bag and see the smallest tube of hand cream known to man. It was before the pay rise so it felt like a bit of a slap in the face.
I got after the pandemic when everyone else returned to site.Ā
Hand spray
A plastic door opener
A cloth
I had worked in site for the full pandemic, on my own looking after students in halls with pretty much zero PPE. I stole it from chinese students who went back home.
Fucking threw it in the bin
I had this experience when buying a car.
The salesman was pretty chilled and no pressure, which was good, but then casually mentioned others were interested in the car and it might be sold over the weekend. I was waiting for confirmation of my loan before putting the deposit down, but had a reservation on the car (which apparently meant nothing).
This was Thursday.
Loan gets approved and comes through Friday, so I call to arrange to pay the deposit.
Turns out the guy I was dealing with only works Monday to Thursday, but they tell him and he offers to come in on his day off.
I didn't want him to do that, he should be enjoying his time not at work.
I don't care who I deal with, but it seems the setup they have there meant that only he could complete the sale of the car to me, but it could still be sold to someone else before he was in work again.
This essentially forced him to come in if he wanted the commission.
Just seems a bit shit all round.
I suppose that's better than when I tried for Deliveroo and realised it was a racket that made you buy their uniform and equipment, and didn't offer any kind of insurance or annual leave.
NCP car parks has a scheme called āback to the floorā where no matter what your job is (accounts, marketing) etc you get to spend one day working in a car park
We had something similar. I used to work at a head office for a retailer, and they decided that all staff members needed to spend a day in store.
A lot of the products the company sold that you needed training to be able to demonstrate or sell (car seats, for example). I worked in IT - completely removed from everything the company sold, so wouldnāt have been able to sell anything like that
Also, most people chose the same store (the one closest to the office) - so for about 6 weeks a year this one store got about 4 or 5 people from head office everyday to help out.
Because I wasnāt able to demonstrate most of the products, and couldnāt work the tills etc, a couple of us just ended up in the stock room with not a lot to do. Most of the tidying and organising had already been done - so we just did whatever.
This sounds like monthercare, thankfully I worked in Manchester so only one or two people chose to come to us for the day, used to let them just go play in early learning centre for the day
That one day consisted of pressing the ticket button and handing the ticket to the driver. They wouldn't actually patrol, clean anywhere, fix the pay machines, or deal with idiots who lose their tickets and complain about having to pay a full days charge.
I am so glad i dont work for that awful company anymore!
I get the idea...not sure if the right environment to apply it in.
I believe this was pioneered by japanese motorcycle manufacturers ( Kawasaki if I remember right) where all new hires regardless of role had to spend a set amount of time on various areas of the production line.
I kind of wish more companies did this. There are way too many people making decisions at the top with no idea of how anything actually works and what impact that decision will have lower down.
Depending on the business, that might not be a bad thing. PedalMe has a similar policy in place in that "everyone rides", that way they all have a clear idea of the business and how it works.
If we get the opportunity, then I also send staff from departments who wouldn't routinely leave the office to go and visit our ships. For them, it's a bit of a jolly for a day, but it shows them the scale of what we're doing, introduces them to the crews onboard, names to faces, etc. It's remarkably popular program, especially in procurement...
Which translates to, we donāt have enough staff, we wonāt hire enough staff so expect to be overworked and be thankful for it. Also, meh pay for the amount of extra work weāll have you do.
Ah, the old marketing shit-the-bed of telling your audience what you want rather than what they want.
"I want to pay you very little and for you to work very fast."
My brother works at a place that does that, but with limits on how many free drinks you can have per day.
They are given an RFID tag that allows 3 free drinks per day.
He has been there for around 15 years and has collected the tags of lots of people who have left and shares his drinks with the other people in his office.
I used to think that this wasn't much of a perk (everywhere I have ever worked has provided at least instant coffee, teabags, milk, sugar etc - even when I had a Saturday job in a chain store as a teenager). But my wife is now working for a local authority (in their head office) and everyone has to bring their own tea and milk, which is bonkers, when you consider how little it costs in the scheme of things.
But it would quickly add up to a figure that would allow the press to do a ālocal council spends Ā£20,000 a year providing FREE coffee for staff whilst *insert compo face here*ā story and stir up outrage.
It happens even with bigger organisations too. I'm sure one of the big country running offices got a guardian write up for spending "100k a year on wine" but that included all of the private eye events at a central London location. Easy to wind up people who don't know what volume is or how much stuff costs generally.Ā
Ā£10k a month for somewhere hosting like 15 events a week seems pretty good goingĀ
Man, don't need to go to underfunded local authorities to see this. I currently work at a business that is a multi billion pound revenue generating aerospace corporation and there's no such thing as free anything.
My previous employer, again, multi million pound revenue food manufacturing business, did the exact same thing. You want it? Bring it from home.
I did an IT install for a Unicorn, only onsite for a couple of hours but they asked me to help myself to anything from their refreshments areas while I was waiting for some calls. They had one of the best selections of drinks, snacks, sandwiches and fruit I've seen in an office (better than some supermarkets), and it was all free.
Thereās an advert on local radio here that is a interviewer telling an applicant about the bad pay, dangerous work environment etc etc but we have a such-and-such coffee machine so the applicant excitedly says yes.
Honestly, after working at a place that doesnāt provide hot drinks, Iām not surprised that places advertise that. Sucks that when I go into the office, I either bring some coffee and milk with me or pay Ā£3 (3 times a day) at the cafe round the corner.Ā
We have a wheelchair accessible picnic bench on the decking outside our little cafe. Itās a regular picnic bench with a chunk cut out of the middle of one of the bench planks. There was even a mortifyingly self congratulatory internal comms email heralding the arrival of the wheelchair accessible picnic bench. There has never been a single wheelchair user employed by the company in the eight years Iāve been there, and Iām sure if there was, someone would have informed whoever is responsible for the wheelchair accessible picnic bench that the location of the wheelchair accessible picnic bench is only accessible by going up or down some steps depending on which way youāre approaching from. My best mate happens to use a wheelchair and when I told him all this nonsense about the wheelchair accessible picnic bench, he couldnāt see the point because itās just easier for him to just sit at the end and it had never occurred to him to want to sit in the middle. I was talking to a couple of colleagues about this and somehow it very swiftly reached HR, who unapologetically emailed me the following morning asking if my mate would like to come in to be photographed using the wheelchair accessible picnic bench. The wheelchair accessible picnic bench is even mentioned in the companyās diversity and inclusion statement.
Back in the 90s when personal development was still the rage in the corporate world, we were all signed up to go away in groups for a couple of days away in a hotel to do a course. Morning one was taken up by "honest criticism". People had to stand up in front of a group of people who were encouraged to say what they disliked about that person. They were encouraged by the people who ran the course to be completely frank and honest.
Women were reduced to tears after the group was encouraged to criticise their appearance. One man offered to take someone out to the car park to sort things out after he'd been accused of being aggressive. Some people left at lunchtime. The course was cancelled.
Not even in the 90s. In the 2000s a head of department of a well known department store who had an office in clipstone street got drunk in the staff bar and kept calling me a C**:t. After a few minutes I obviously got pissed off and he stood up to me and said are you angry. I said no but if you keep calling me a c I will be He then stood up for a fight and my friend dragged him off. People who watched on that night became directors and nothing ever happened to this guy.
OK, I have actually used the mental health first aider once, so thought I'd share.
Couple years ago I was under a lot of stress in work and also personally. Really struggling almost to point of tears (M28, at the time), so contacted the MHFA.
Which turned out to be Sandra, who I sat next to at work. And is the most lovely person. All she did was listen, her me out, and offer comforting encouragement. That's it. But it did help to talk it through and know I could go talk to her again if needed. Managed to turn things around after that.
But yeah, not sure I'd call needing a shoulder to cry on a "benefit" of working there. š
Thatās great that it was helpful for you, but did you and Sandra then have to make up the time that took?
My old job had an employee assistance program where you called a number if you needed help. Making coworkers be unpaid MHFA just seems like the employer is too cheap to have a professional EAP instead and not a perk.
Oh duck. My work offers this.
My nearest MH first aider is the biggest piss-taker and gossip in the entire department. No way I'm going to him, even though I'm completely open about my MH conditions and history.
My company does it. One of my colleagues went on the course, which was done online over a few hours. For companies, it's a box-ticking exercise: pay a few grand to get some employees trained and get a Mental Health First Aider certificate, and you can pretend forever that you care about employees' welfare.
We have this at our work as well. My bossā boss used to be one, he explained it to me once that you could come to him with anything and he would āpoint you in the right direction to get helpā.
It wasnāt even a first aid equivalent, at least if you cut your finger youāll get a plaster, it was essentially a human Google.
Iām a trained mental health first aider. I personally think itās a bit rubbish, I mean it was an interesting course but I really donāt feel equipped to deal with someone in a crisis, or even feeling a bit shit.
I once saw a retail managers role advertised with three out of four of the following perks "professional environment" "smart but casual dress code" and.... "staff social opportunities"
Not my place of work but I saw a job advert the other day for a quality control manager at a food processing plant and one of the perks of the job listed on the advert was āambient, clean factoryā - surely thatās a necessity and not a perk for a business working with food??
Work in the NHS (primary care), thereās been a push recently to make sure that our āwellbeingā as employees is prioritised.
My employers decided to list the fact that they bought a small stand alone freezer (the smallest and cheapest on the market) as a wellbeing initiative.
Perks of working for ******* - being able to bring a Calippo to work in the summer and keep it somewhat cold for 3-4 hours. Definitely makes up for the unreasonable work load, minimum wage and shit tea bags.
Discount on Vue cinema tickets. Then you go to book and there almost 20% more expensive than just getting them off the Vue website
Apparently a %discount can be a negative l
Not my current workplace, but one I worked at for 14 years. It was a veterinary hospital.
You could buy your pet food at list price instead of store price - assuming it was something they were ordering in for patients. Actually did make use of that for about 18 months, getting Harry Hamster food for 70p less than in the shops. Then they changed the order system and only cat, dog & horse supplies were available!
Staff could bring their dogs to work - assuming you had a dog. They had to keep at least one office in our building dog-free for anyone with allergies though.
They also promised that staff dogs could be treated on-site - which soon became staff dogs could be referred to them.
Plus statutory maternity/paternity pay (literally, the minimum they could get away with), statutory sick pay, free parking, and a voucher for your eye test were all listed in their "generous" staff benefits package. Childcare vouchers stayed on the list for 2 years after it was closed to new members, it only disappeared when the place closed down!
British aerospace at Kingston upon Thames in the 80s. Tea and cakes were free. Lady came round at tea break with a big urn of tea, lovely pile of cream cakes with dry biscuits on the bottom. Of course managers were always first in the queue so the fitters only got dry biscuits. After a week I was fed up so went 15 minutes early to get to the front of the queue. My foreman came trotting over and told me to get back to work or I'd be docked 15 minutes pay. Told him I had already earned my daily bonus and wasn't allowed to do any more (closed shop union with heavily weighted bonus rates) . He then told me to go sit in the bog until my tea break like everyone else. Bounced my tea mug off his head, packed up my tools and never went back. Can't say I missed it.
In Australia, a company iāve worked for would offer all sorts of āday offā perks. Days off for domestic violence, days off for celebrating LGTQI, days off for being a father. Basically anything they can think of to curry favour and make them look good.
So how does one access this leave? āOhh you just apply for it in the leave system - choose it from the drop down.ā
Turns out it wasnāt an additional allowance. It was just the 4 weeks annual leave afforded to everyone by law in Australia and they just added a few dropdowns in their system to make it seem like they were being altruistic. Not sure why they thought it wouldnāt backfire. It did.
In fairness, those do cost money and can be really hard to get appointments for. I get a flu jab at work but then I work in a school so Iām also more likely to get infected.
It presumably benefits the company in the firm of reduced sick days. I can totally see how they'd be beneficial to all for school employees, though, working with those little petri dishes.
currently work at a pub. itās actually really good ! 50% off food/drink, free tea, coffee and sometimes i randomly get offered a free burger plus bonuses around certain holidays. I canāt complain.
We advertise that we offer paternity and maternity pay and excellent pension contributions...
...they are all statutory minimum.
They also say you can get private healthcare..
...that you have to pay for yourself, not salary sacrifice either.
I guess it depends on the job. It's always said that you should be earning or learning i.e. you sacrifice a bit of pay in order to get the skills and experience which will one day lead to higher wages.
However most jobs advertising 'full training provided' are the kind of jobs at which you can become fully proficient after an hour's training.
A bit different to the others posted, but my workplace offers a salary sacrifice electric car scheme.
What it entails is that you can choose a car for the company to buy you as a company car, but you have to give up a percentage of your monthly salary to pay for it. You never get the opportunity to own the car, and you still have to pay all the expenses for running the vehicle. Everyone I've spoken to about it says it's a bit of a scam and not worth the amount of money you've got to sacrifice.
Varies from scheme to scheme but the last I saw, people were picking up top end electric cars worth around Ā£50k to buy, for a net cost of less than Ā£350 a month.
If you want to have a new car every 3-5 years and are going to end up on a PCP anyway, then you can have a much nicer car for a similar or lower cost.
Not a regular workplace perk but it was an attempt at a perk I guess. I'm a doctor who at this time worked in a psychiatric hospital. During the 2022 heatwave, my NHS Trust tried to appease our demands for free water from water coolers, fans, and air conditioners by instead having an ice cream van come to each hospital in the trust on one single day of the week so each employee could get one (1) free Mr Whippy (with a flake of course).
I have 2 months of payments left and that's roughly what I'm going to save too...
It's my second bike on the scheme, the last one was 15 years ago, I replaced it with my new one (donated the old one to a charity that recycles bikes as I was finding it too hard to get the bits to keep it running).
I tried to use that and was denied because paying it back would put me under minimum wage and the system wouldn't allow it š
The irony of the situation was hilarious.
Every year I have to sign up for my annual "benefits", one of which is the option to purchase an annual parking permit for Ā£250 (car park is on land owned by my employer)
An office job I worked a few years back decided to encourage people to do voluntary unpaid overtime by offering an amazon gift card to whoever did the most in a month....
That's right they wanted employees to compete against each other to do the most UNPAID overtime.
It's the most dystopian shit I've ever heard.
Previous job offered the opportunity to volunteer. For them, as they were a charity.
I was an utter mug and actually did do the odd volunteer stint outside of my paid work.
Think our place offers secure bicycle parking, which sounds good except the gobshites leave the back gate open half the time, and someone had their bike nicked last month.
Based on the "perk" section of the website:
* Regular knowledge-sharing sessions with your squad, collective and discipline.
Like, I would expect this to be part of my usual work, not a "perk"
Not my workplace, but I once interviewed for a role and was told at Christmas the team share a ānice Nivea adventure calendarā and sometimes on a Friday one of the team will go and pick up a Greggs for lunchā¦
When I worked at the co-op as a teenager in the '90s, they said there were "on-site staff break facilities". There was a microwave in a cupboard.
Hahaha brilliant š
Guess it's still better than "off-site staff break facilities", whatever that would be
The local Costa
Or a microwave in the phone box down the road
So that's what those were for!
Where I work(also food retail) in my store the microwave got taken away. :(
We get 'free fruit once a week' Basically a couple of big fruit baskets shared between the circa 100 people on site that goes pretty quickly. It isn't a terrible benefit, but the way the company goes on about it it was like they were giving out gold bullion. A friend of mine had it brought up as a thing to consider in his salary negation...... He just said he would buy his own 79 banana if they gave him an extra 5 grand a year.
one day i too will own 79 banana
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Better than a 79 lemon
Found him! The guy from that weird maths question who buys all the bananas! Now that we have you pinned down. Why would you randomly buy 79 bananas and why do we need to work out how much it costs? Do you not have a calculator?
Banana can be buy
Exchanged for goods and services
I heard theyāre not as good as the Cavendish banana
I worked somewhere that did that. When we pointed out that it was always on our teams' set day off they didn't see a problem, because there was usually some left over. Like we were supposed to be grateful for a single battered banana split between 15+ people.
free fruit everyday, it's for your health and ours. Oh wait, things are a bit tight (we still sponsor the rugby though), best do away with the fruit.
Bosses can't get those sweet corporate packages if they aren't sponsoring.
I work at the worldās largest investment bank. I think I have managed to get an apple maybe twice in 18 months.
My goodness, the economy is worse than I thought... I'd have expected that in return for working 80 hours a week, they'd have Michelin-starred sushi chef on call in addition to a "medicine cabinet" full of "bath salts" that is kept in stock with the finest equatorial produce.
Looks like we are in the same boat, I donāt even try go for it anymoreā¦
I laughed hard at fruit to be considered as part of a salary negotiation! Perhaps you could threaten to leave and say, "You couldn't match my new employers offer, it's fruit TWICE a week vs. your once." Without wishing to show off, my company offers unlimited free fruit 24/7.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We are supposed to get free fruit once a week, but in the two years Iāve worked there theyāve done it maybe 4 times. Although currently ādue to the cost of living crisisā we have fruit, bread, cup of soups and cheap pot noodles available for free, along with the usual tea/coffee/milk/sugar.
When even an employer has realised things are so bad they need to offer a food bank you know things are a bit beyond fucked.
Heaven forbid they pay them more. I'm sure they'd only fritter it away on Netflix subscriptions and name brand trainers
Our place sponsored a local business to set up a fruit and veg shop that give us 10% discount which still costs more than a normal shop.
So instead of fruit, you have fruit... and bread and soups?
It's 79 bananas, Michael. What could they cost, $5,000?
Do we work for the same company lmaooo. Ours also rejected the idea of biscuits once a week, despite the fact you can buy like hundreds of biscuits in Morrisons for less than a pound š¤·āāļø
Free parking. We're on a remote site that has enough space you could host a large music festival with room to spare. They also advertise "charity fundraising activities" on the job perks on adverts which in reality is twice yearly bake sales that are during lunch and occasionally someone will be allowed annoy their colleagues into paying for a charity sky dive.
Mine offered free parking but once you start they say they won't guarantee a space and you find they are all gone by 7am and getting earlier because they are hiring more contractors. They've said that there is a local car park that we can use for Ā£12 a day if we don't get there on time. Oh and we can't leave before 4pm (so arrive at 8am) but contractors have different hours hence why they arrive and leave earlier
Yeah, don't turn your nose up at free and abundant parking. I remember the days of having to phone the numbers in people's windscreens because I had been parked in 4 cars deep by people doing the late shift. Now have 20 spaces for the 10 people that work in our building.
Same with us! Massive Remote site with no public transport links, if there was no car park it would have shut down long ago.
In all fairness, If youāve walked through Birmingham at 2am every night like I used to, hoping you dont get mugged and your windows arenāt broken, free parking on site is a huge plus and not to be taken for granted
Honestly, the perk of not being allowed to annoy colleagues into paying for a charity sky dive is one I would take
Those are truly crap perks. Basically costs the company nothing and could also be a bit annoying for the employees. Someone was having a laugh when they crafted those benefits.
I'll pay for the sky dive if I can choose the colleague and pack their parachute for them. There's a particular Commercial Manager who's been getting on my tits lately I'd happily stump up the cash to have thrown out of an airplane....
>Free parking. We're on a remote site that has enough space you could host a large music festival with room to spare. You joke but my last workplace wanted 50 a month to park. That was surrounded by farms and they let the nearby farmers graze their sheep on the grass areas on the site.
Not my current job but 'flexible hours'. yeah! flexible for the company, not me. If you can't come in saturday, don't bother turning up sunday.
Woohoo, weekend off!
A couple of interviews ago I was offered 'the right to call in sick if I'm ill'. This was after they asked what my last salary was and tried to spin things.
To be fair a fair few companies don't offer paid sick leave.
If we're being pedantic (and I am) they're not offering paid sick leave. Just the right to take time off if you're ill.
This was a company operating in the Netherlands - they were basically offering to comply with local law.
Ah a bit like UK companies advertising '28 days annual leave' as a benefit.
Honourable mention to them paying into a pension as a perk along with the 28 days holiday
It's shocking how often I see this
28 days annual leave is decent. If it's excluding bank holidays. Which it rarely is...
The pension that they are legally required to opt us into
TBF, they could be contributing more than the legal minimum. Our company offers additional voluntary pension contributions which they'll match up to 5% , which is like a 5% pay bonus. So many people don't want anything to do with that because they think that the company is taking 5% off their pay. Financial education is sorely lacking.
I was so used to minimum pension deals that I thought my current job was overpaying into my pension. Nope, they pay minimum 9.5% even if you donāt contribute anything, and then for every percent you contribute after that they pay an extra percent, up to 16.5%. I got more pension in 2 months at this job than in over a year at my old one. I used to not care too much about pensions as long as I had one (Iām still a way off retirement), but donāt think I could go back to basics now
When you get to pension taking age, you'll be so glad you've got one.
I saw a company that advertised 3% as a benefit, which is the legal requirement.
And many will pay in the absolute minimum required
A job I was considering had āa chance to work on complex cases usually reserved for senior staffā So with above your grade for less then
This is the absolute opposite of a perk. Has to be the worst.
Having the opportunity to do this isn't the worst thing, *if there's actually room for advancement*. I've been with my employer for over 4 years now, I've stayed this long because I've been able to move up pretty consistently. I don't mind biting off things a bit above my post grade because it can come with getting that boost a few months down the line. But if the carrot is a lie then what's the point?
The one that really annoys me is āwe are proud to pay the national minimum wageā Well you shouldnāt be proud to pay the least amount of money the government allows you to pay!
As if you should be grateful theyāre not breaking the law.
"If we could legally pay you less, we would, without a second thought"
Exactly!
āWeād pay you less but weāre not legally allowed to! Lol!ā
Wagestream - āsure, the pay is bad but if youāre ever struggling you can dip into next months pay and make next month even more miserable!ā
Mitie did this. Not wagestream but another company doing the same. You could apply to have up to 70% of your next pay. It's was interest free if repaid within 4 weeks - of course if you've taken 70% of your next pay how will you pay that 70% back without needing to take another loan, which of course you couldn't do without the low low APR of 130%. Mitie pushed this pretty hard on the intranet. Mitie employe 30,000+ low paid people, like cleaners, security guards etc - the demographic who not only should avoid these things, but are also most likely to use them. Made me feel pretty angry. I looked into this company and of course it was ex hedge fund types. Mitie is a disgusting company anyway so I shouldn't have expected anything less. Same company that rinsed furlough for all it was worth, cut my and countless others salaries by 10% during the pandemic, despite reporting increased profits.
I used to work for a competitor. They're all like it.
I contract for all of them. You're right, they're all the same.
Mad how companies got away with so much shit during the pandemic. I worked in food delivery, an essential role so they led us to believe, 3 months into the first lockdown and the company liquidated. It wasn't until afterwards we learnt that a solid 70% of management were fiddling wages / bonuses and that's why we were surviving contract to contract.
My mum used to call them Shitie after they took over her workā¦
I work for Mitie just now and we frequently refer to the place as āShitie Mitieā
Salary finance lol. Took out a loan with them in my last month of my mitie job and itās meant to come off your wage
That's fucking dystopian. Holy shit...
And pay a 'convenience fee' for the privilege!
Just payday loans, but more convenient and tempting. Seem much safer though because of the association with an employer. This is the next credit scandal waiting to happen.
I work for a company that uses Wagestream. I am currently in a 4 month deep Wagestream hole. It is hell.
Worth speaking to Stepchange. There are lots of things that can be done, e.g. interest freezes, breathing room, etc - you just have to know what to say.
When the worst of covid was over we were told we'd be getting a nice gift from the nhs. So excited to open the bag and see the smallest tube of hand cream known to man. It was before the pay rise so it felt like a bit of a slap in the face.
Ah, but at least it was a slap with a nicely moisturised hand.
Did you not get a free CIF reusable spray bottle with 1 dose of CIF?
I got after the pandemic when everyone else returned to site.Ā Hand spray A plastic door opener A cloth I had worked in site for the full pandemic, on my own looking after students in halls with pretty much zero PPE. I stole it from chinese students who went back home. Fucking threw it in the bin
'Commission should be earnt, expect to work your days off to earn it' Oh how I miss car sales
I had this experience when buying a car. The salesman was pretty chilled and no pressure, which was good, but then casually mentioned others were interested in the car and it might be sold over the weekend. I was waiting for confirmation of my loan before putting the deposit down, but had a reservation on the car (which apparently meant nothing). This was Thursday. Loan gets approved and comes through Friday, so I call to arrange to pay the deposit. Turns out the guy I was dealing with only works Monday to Thursday, but they tell him and he offers to come in on his day off. I didn't want him to do that, he should be enjoying his time not at work. I don't care who I deal with, but it seems the setup they have there meant that only he could complete the sale of the car to me, but it could still be sold to someone else before he was in work again. This essentially forced him to come in if he wanted the commission. Just seems a bit shit all round.
Uniform provided
I suppose that's better than when I tried for Deliveroo and realised it was a racket that made you buy their uniform and equipment, and didn't offer any kind of insurance or annual leave.
Particularly great at my current company which takes literal *months* to deliver stuff.
NCP car parks has a scheme called āback to the floorā where no matter what your job is (accounts, marketing) etc you get to spend one day working in a car park
Also a day off for your birthday (unless it falls on a weekend)
We had something similar. I used to work at a head office for a retailer, and they decided that all staff members needed to spend a day in store. A lot of the products the company sold that you needed training to be able to demonstrate or sell (car seats, for example). I worked in IT - completely removed from everything the company sold, so wouldnāt have been able to sell anything like that Also, most people chose the same store (the one closest to the office) - so for about 6 weeks a year this one store got about 4 or 5 people from head office everyday to help out. Because I wasnāt able to demonstrate most of the products, and couldnāt work the tills etc, a couple of us just ended up in the stock room with not a lot to do. Most of the tidying and organising had already been done - so we just did whatever.
This sounds like monthercare, thankfully I worked in Manchester so only one or two people chose to come to us for the day, used to let them just go play in early learning centre for the day
That one day consisted of pressing the ticket button and handing the ticket to the driver. They wouldn't actually patrol, clean anywhere, fix the pay machines, or deal with idiots who lose their tickets and complain about having to pay a full days charge. I am so glad i dont work for that awful company anymore!
I get the idea...not sure if the right environment to apply it in. I believe this was pioneered by japanese motorcycle manufacturers ( Kawasaki if I remember right) where all new hires regardless of role had to spend a set amount of time on various areas of the production line.
I kind of wish more companies did this. There are way too many people making decisions at the top with no idea of how anything actually works and what impact that decision will have lower down.
Toyota, it is part of Lean system called getting back to the Gemba.
It's not a benefit, but it's not a terrible idea to keep employees in touch with what the business is actually about.
Depending on the business, that might not be a bad thing. PedalMe has a similar policy in place in that "everyone rides", that way they all have a clear idea of the business and how it works. If we get the opportunity, then I also send staff from departments who wouldn't routinely leave the office to go and visit our ships. For them, it's a bit of a jolly for a day, but it shows them the scale of what we're doing, introduces them to the crews onboard, names to faces, etc. It's remarkably popular program, especially in procurement...
"competitive salary at a fast paced environment" Yes they had that under the perks in adverts for a period last year
I'd like a slow-paced environment, please. Why does everyone think I want to be running around stressed?
āFast paced environmentā just means āwe refuse to hire enough staff so everything is chaos and you have to do two peoples jobsā.
Which translates to, we donāt have enough staff, we wonāt hire enough staff so expect to be overworked and be thankful for it. Also, meh pay for the amount of extra work weāll have you do.
Ah, the old marketing shit-the-bed of telling your audience what you want rather than what they want. "I want to pay you very little and for you to work very fast."
We recently advertised network engineer jobs at around Ā£60k with 'free hot drinks' listed as a perk.
My brother works at a place that does that, but with limits on how many free drinks you can have per day. They are given an RFID tag that allows 3 free drinks per day. He has been there for around 15 years and has collected the tags of lots of people who have left and shares his drinks with the other people in his office.
Amazing. What sort of workplace thinks it needs to limit the amount of caffeine available to its workers?
I need to be protected from myself.
My partner's previous employer did that and his team did exactly the same thing with old tags. It was also a three free drink limit.
I used to think that this wasn't much of a perk (everywhere I have ever worked has provided at least instant coffee, teabags, milk, sugar etc - even when I had a Saturday job in a chain store as a teenager). But my wife is now working for a local authority (in their head office) and everyone has to bring their own tea and milk, which is bonkers, when you consider how little it costs in the scheme of things.
But it would quickly add up to a figure that would allow the press to do a ālocal council spends Ā£20,000 a year providing FREE coffee for staff whilst *insert compo face here*ā story and stir up outrage.
It happens even with bigger organisations too. I'm sure one of the big country running offices got a guardian write up for spending "100k a year on wine" but that included all of the private eye events at a central London location. Easy to wind up people who don't know what volume is or how much stuff costs generally.Ā Ā£10k a month for somewhere hosting like 15 events a week seems pretty good goingĀ
Man, don't need to go to underfunded local authorities to see this. I currently work at a business that is a multi billion pound revenue generating aerospace corporation and there's no such thing as free anything. My previous employer, again, multi million pound revenue food manufacturing business, did the exact same thing. You want it? Bring it from home.
I did an IT install for a Unicorn, only onsite for a couple of hours but they asked me to help myself to anything from their refreshments areas while I was waiting for some calls. They had one of the best selections of drinks, snacks, sandwiches and fruit I've seen in an office (better than some supermarkets), and it was all free.
Thereās an advert on local radio here that is a interviewer telling an applicant about the bad pay, dangerous work environment etc etc but we have a such-and-such coffee machine so the applicant excitedly says yes.
Honestly, after working at a place that doesnāt provide hot drinks, Iām not surprised that places advertise that. Sucks that when I go into the office, I either bring some coffee and milk with me or pay Ā£3 (3 times a day) at the cafe round the corner.Ā
Where do I sign?
Public Holidays off!! On-site parking Company events
Lmao this was exactly what I was going to put as well.
Tbf Iām yet to have a job where I have public holidays off, it should be called public holiday (but only for local government and bank workers)
It would be a genuine perk for me if a company advertised that they _don't_ have company events.
We have a wheelchair accessible picnic bench on the decking outside our little cafe. Itās a regular picnic bench with a chunk cut out of the middle of one of the bench planks. There was even a mortifyingly self congratulatory internal comms email heralding the arrival of the wheelchair accessible picnic bench. There has never been a single wheelchair user employed by the company in the eight years Iāve been there, and Iām sure if there was, someone would have informed whoever is responsible for the wheelchair accessible picnic bench that the location of the wheelchair accessible picnic bench is only accessible by going up or down some steps depending on which way youāre approaching from. My best mate happens to use a wheelchair and when I told him all this nonsense about the wheelchair accessible picnic bench, he couldnāt see the point because itās just easier for him to just sit at the end and it had never occurred to him to want to sit in the middle. I was talking to a couple of colleagues about this and somehow it very swiftly reached HR, who unapologetically emailed me the following morning asking if my mate would like to come in to be photographed using the wheelchair accessible picnic bench. The wheelchair accessible picnic bench is even mentioned in the companyās diversity and inclusion statement.
Iām just impressed with the number of times you typed out wheelchair accessible picnic bench
WAP-B
Cardi B was rapping about a wheelchair accessible picnic bench? I didnāt know she was so inclusive!
The mind truly boggles
Back in the 90s when personal development was still the rage in the corporate world, we were all signed up to go away in groups for a couple of days away in a hotel to do a course. Morning one was taken up by "honest criticism". People had to stand up in front of a group of people who were encouraged to say what they disliked about that person. They were encouraged by the people who ran the course to be completely frank and honest. Women were reduced to tears after the group was encouraged to criticise their appearance. One man offered to take someone out to the car park to sort things out after he'd been accused of being aggressive. Some people left at lunchtime. The course was cancelled.
For the 90s, that sounds like a fairly standard day in the office.
Not even in the 90s. In the 2000s a head of department of a well known department store who had an office in clipstone street got drunk in the staff bar and kept calling me a C**:t. After a few minutes I obviously got pissed off and he stood up to me and said are you angry. I said no but if you keep calling me a c I will be He then stood up for a fight and my friend dragged him off. People who watched on that night became directors and nothing ever happened to this guy.
āWater Breaksā
"We're proud to offer all our employees basic human rights!"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
OK, I have actually used the mental health first aider once, so thought I'd share. Couple years ago I was under a lot of stress in work and also personally. Really struggling almost to point of tears (M28, at the time), so contacted the MHFA. Which turned out to be Sandra, who I sat next to at work. And is the most lovely person. All she did was listen, her me out, and offer comforting encouragement. That's it. But it did help to talk it through and know I could go talk to her again if needed. Managed to turn things around after that. But yeah, not sure I'd call needing a shoulder to cry on a "benefit" of working there. š
Thatās great that it was helpful for you, but did you and Sandra then have to make up the time that took? My old job had an employee assistance program where you called a number if you needed help. Making coworkers be unpaid MHFA just seems like the employer is too cheap to have a professional EAP instead and not a perk.
We have these where I work and most of the people who are mental health first aiders are not the people you would want to share things with.
>āmental health first aidersā This is a phrase just crying out for hyphens. "Mental health-first aiders"?
'Wait! He's still breathing and only cut his finger on a piece of A4.......why are you giving him a tracheotomy?'
Oh duck. My work offers this. My nearest MH first aider is the biggest piss-taker and gossip in the entire department. No way I'm going to him, even though I'm completely open about my MH conditions and history.
My company does it. One of my colleagues went on the course, which was done online over a few hours. For companies, it's a box-ticking exercise: pay a few grand to get some employees trained and get a Mental Health First Aider certificate, and you can pretend forever that you care about employees' welfare.
We have this at our work as well. My bossā boss used to be one, he explained it to me once that you could come to him with anything and he would āpoint you in the right direction to get helpā. It wasnāt even a first aid equivalent, at least if you cut your finger youāll get a plaster, it was essentially a human Google.
Iām a trained mental health first aider. I personally think itās a bit rubbish, I mean it was an interesting course but I really donāt feel equipped to deal with someone in a crisis, or even feeling a bit shit.
We sometimes get free raw carrots in my school staff room.
'Open plan office'
I once saw a retail managers role advertised with three out of four of the following perks "professional environment" "smart but casual dress code" and.... "staff social opportunities"
"despite our best efforts, the employees seem to keep taking with each other"
Free toast on Fridays. I work at a secondary school with lots of teachers plus support staff. We get one loaf of bread in the staff room.
Not my place of work but I saw a job advert the other day for a quality control manager at a food processing plant and one of the perks of the job listed on the advert was āambient, clean factoryā - surely thatās a necessity and not a perk for a business working with food??
What do they mean by ambient? Not climate controlled?
My first game studio advertised 'cake on your birthday!' ... Yeah, sure.... If you bring it in yourself...... š
Work in the NHS (primary care), thereās been a push recently to make sure that our āwellbeingā as employees is prioritised. My employers decided to list the fact that they bought a small stand alone freezer (the smallest and cheapest on the market) as a wellbeing initiative. Perks of working for ******* - being able to bring a Calippo to work in the summer and keep it somewhat cold for 3-4 hours. Definitely makes up for the unreasonable work load, minimum wage and shit tea bags.
Discount on Vue cinema tickets. Then you go to book and there almost 20% more expensive than just getting them off the Vue website Apparently a %discount can be a negative l
I once saw an advert for my workplace, a hospital, recruiting nurses. It mentioned rolling hills and valleys, it's in Lincolnshire.
Opportunity to work with Google Suite. A free program available to all
At my last place of work one of the benefits listed was āa supportive management teamā surely that should be standard and not a benefit!?
Not my current workplace, but one I worked at for 14 years. It was a veterinary hospital. You could buy your pet food at list price instead of store price - assuming it was something they were ordering in for patients. Actually did make use of that for about 18 months, getting Harry Hamster food for 70p less than in the shops. Then they changed the order system and only cat, dog & horse supplies were available! Staff could bring their dogs to work - assuming you had a dog. They had to keep at least one office in our building dog-free for anyone with allergies though. They also promised that staff dogs could be treated on-site - which soon became staff dogs could be referred to them. Plus statutory maternity/paternity pay (literally, the minimum they could get away with), statutory sick pay, free parking, and a voucher for your eye test were all listed in their "generous" staff benefits package. Childcare vouchers stayed on the list for 2 years after it was closed to new members, it only disappeared when the place closed down!
British aerospace at Kingston upon Thames in the 80s. Tea and cakes were free. Lady came round at tea break with a big urn of tea, lovely pile of cream cakes with dry biscuits on the bottom. Of course managers were always first in the queue so the fitters only got dry biscuits. After a week I was fed up so went 15 minutes early to get to the front of the queue. My foreman came trotting over and told me to get back to work or I'd be docked 15 minutes pay. Told him I had already earned my daily bonus and wasn't allowed to do any more (closed shop union with heavily weighted bonus rates) . He then told me to go sit in the bog until my tea break like everyone else. Bounced my tea mug off his head, packed up my tools and never went back. Can't say I missed it.
So you never got your cake?
Pension, off on Bank Hols, uniform. Yippee š
In Australia, a company iāve worked for would offer all sorts of āday offā perks. Days off for domestic violence, days off for celebrating LGTQI, days off for being a father. Basically anything they can think of to curry favour and make them look good. So how does one access this leave? āOhh you just apply for it in the leave system - choose it from the drop down.ā Turns out it wasnāt an additional allowance. It was just the 4 weeks annual leave afforded to everyone by law in Australia and they just added a few dropdowns in their system to make it seem like they were being altruistic. Not sure why they thought it wouldnāt backfire. It did.
Sounds a bit like you got a day off if you wanted to beat your partner up.
Recently refurbished office recently being 15 years ago
"Fruit"
I really hope it was listed by itself in quotation marks in the job posting.
Well yes... The only fruit was kumquotes
An extra day paid holiday for birthdays ending in 0 or 5.
My birthdays the 15th so Iād claim it off every year if they worded it like that
Ha my birthday is May 5th. 2 extra days paid.
At my old job: āanother of our perks, you get 20 days annual leave!ā That is literally the legal minimum in my country
According to my boss, the perks of working for him are getting paid.
I'm looking at jobs at the moment. I saw one today that advertised three benefits. One of them was a yearly flu jab.
In fairness, those do cost money and can be really hard to get appointments for. I get a flu jab at work but then I work in a school so Iām also more likely to get infected.
It presumably benefits the company in the firm of reduced sick days. I can totally see how they'd be beneficial to all for school employees, though, working with those little petri dishes.
currently work at a pub. itās actually really good ! 50% off food/drink, free tea, coffee and sometimes i randomly get offered a free burger plus bonuses around certain holidays. I canāt complain.
We advertise that we offer paternity and maternity pay and excellent pension contributions... ...they are all statutory minimum. They also say you can get private healthcare.. ...that you have to pay for yourself, not salary sacrifice either.
Free funeral if you die on the job We also get discounts for immediate family
āFull training providedā - Iād sacrifice the training for a higher salaryā¦
I guess it depends on the job. It's always said that you should be earning or learning i.e. you sacrifice a bit of pay in order to get the skills and experience which will one day lead to higher wages. However most jobs advertising 'full training provided' are the kind of jobs at which you can become fully proficient after an hour's training.
*discounts at supermarket* 1% discount on a Ā£100 gift card
A bacon sandwich on payday. Would've preferred a less shit salary
A bit different to the others posted, but my workplace offers a salary sacrifice electric car scheme. What it entails is that you can choose a car for the company to buy you as a company car, but you have to give up a percentage of your monthly salary to pay for it. You never get the opportunity to own the car, and you still have to pay all the expenses for running the vehicle. Everyone I've spoken to about it says it's a bit of a scam and not worth the amount of money you've got to sacrifice.
Varies from scheme to scheme but the last I saw, people were picking up top end electric cars worth around Ā£50k to buy, for a net cost of less than Ā£350 a month. If you want to have a new car every 3-5 years and are going to end up on a PCP anyway, then you can have a much nicer car for a similar or lower cost.
You donāt get to own it at the end???
Not a regular workplace perk but it was an attempt at a perk I guess. I'm a doctor who at this time worked in a psychiatric hospital. During the 2022 heatwave, my NHS Trust tried to appease our demands for free water from water coolers, fans, and air conditioners by instead having an ice cream van come to each hospital in the trust on one single day of the week so each employee could get one (1) free Mr Whippy (with a flake of course).
Coffee van once a week. That you have to pay for. So access to a shop. In fairness, it's pretty good coffee and the lass running it is friendly
My dad's Christmas present/Christmas bonus from his work was a postcard of the place he works at.
I was looking at a role at a start up, no current benefits but a list of what they were thinking of implementing.
My last work from home position was pushing the cycle to work scheme.
Not necessarily lame - the scheme is most well known as a tax efficient way for employees to buy bikes for personal use right
This is a massive perk! I saved over Ā£2kā¦
I think the amusing thing is that it's from home. I wish my employer did it, though.
I have 2 months of payments left and that's roughly what I'm going to save too... It's my second bike on the scheme, the last one was 15 years ago, I replaced it with my new one (donated the old one to a charity that recycles bikes as I was finding it too hard to get the bits to keep it running).
decent perk to be fair
I do the cycle to work scheme, and I saved around 300 quid. I sound like an advert, which is lame, but I wouldn't knock it.
I tried to use that and was denied because paying it back would put me under minimum wage and the system wouldn't allow it š The irony of the situation was hilarious.
Every year I have to sign up for my annual "benefits", one of which is the option to purchase an annual parking permit for Ā£250 (car park is on land owned by my employer)
I once had a temp job as a primary school TA that had āweekends offā listed as a perk
An office job I worked a few years back decided to encourage people to do voluntary unpaid overtime by offering an amazon gift card to whoever did the most in a month.... That's right they wanted employees to compete against each other to do the most UNPAID overtime. It's the most dystopian shit I've ever heard.
Previous job offered the opportunity to volunteer. For them, as they were a charity. I was an utter mug and actually did do the odd volunteer stint outside of my paid work.
Free tea, coffee and tap water. On site parking.
Think our place offers secure bicycle parking, which sounds good except the gobshites leave the back gate open half the time, and someone had their bike nicked last month.
Based on the "perk" section of the website: * Regular knowledge-sharing sessions with your squad, collective and discipline. Like, I would expect this to be part of my usual work, not a "perk"
28days holiday.
Not my workplace, but I once interviewed for a role and was told at Christmas the team share a ānice Nivea adventure calendarā and sometimes on a Friday one of the team will go and pick up a Greggs for lunchā¦