Companies With Great Employee Perks
A number of companies go above and beyond these standard benefits, providing innovative new perks to keep employees happy and productive. Here is a list of fifteen companies (in alphabetical order) that have developed unique benefits for their employees.
1. 3M Company
Headquarters: St. Paul, Minnesota
What they do: 3M Company produces a variety of products ranging from adhesives to electronics to medical products. The company includes brands such as Post-it, Scotch, and Ace.
Employee Perks: 3M offers a variety of perks to keep employees mentally and physically healthy. They offer smoking cessation, weight management, and stress management programs. The office also contains an on-site pharmacy, medical clinic, and a fitness center. Employees can also take advantage of the company’s child and elder care consulting services.
2. AOL
Headquarters: New York, New York
What they do: AOL is a mass media corporation that develops brands and websites. AOL brands include MapQuest and Moviefone.
Employee Perks: AOL offers great perks for new parents. The company’s WellBaby program provides a number of family benefits to employees, including prenatal instruction and a lactation program. The office includes an on-site care facility for new parents as well.
3. Yahoo
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California
What they do: Yahoo is a multinational Internet corporation known for various applications such as the Yahoo search engine and Yahoo mail.
Employee Perks: Yahoo employees work hard, but they play hard too. Staff can burn off steam in the on-site gym with yoga, cardio-kickboxing, and Pilates classes, or relax with regularly scheduled events like concerts and barbecues. To have fun outside the office, Yahoo workers also get discounts at ski resorts and amusement parks.
Yahoo employees can also attend the company’s Influential Speaker Series, where celebrities and like Tom Cruise and Tom Brokaw come to speak to the company.
4. Boston Consulting Group
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts
What they do: The Boston Consulting Group is a global management consulting company.
Employee Perks: Executives at the Boston Consulting Company strive to instill a work-life balance in their employees to combat the high intensity of consulting. The firm issues a “Red Zone Report” to management when an employee is working too many hours.
The firm also allows flexible scheduling, which is ideal for working parents. BCG offers generous leave; new moms can extend their unpaid leave up to one year (this includes adoptive mothers as well).
5. Campbell Soup
Headquarters: Camden, New Jersey
What they do: Campbell produces canned soups and other related products, which are sold internationally.
Employee Perks: For employees with young children, Campbell Soup has an on-site kindergarten and after-school programs. The office also has a lactation room for mothers. Other benefits help to keep employees healthy: the company offers healthy cooking lessons, subsidized costs on healthy meal options in the cafeteria, and an on-site fitness center.
6. Deloitte
Headquarters: New York, New York
What they do: Deloitte is a professional services firm that provides clients with a variety of financial services, including tax, audit, and financial advice.
Employee Perks: Deloitte offers employees unique sabbatical programs. Employees can take up to four unpaid weeks off for any reason. Workers can also choose to take 3–6 months off, partially paid, to pursue a career-enhancing opportunity.
7. Ernst & Young
Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
What they do: EY is an international professional services firm, providing audit, tax, consulting, and advisory services to companies.
Employee Perks: EY provides a variety of benefits for working parents. The company provides low-cost backup childcare and a parents’ network that includes seminars and forums (such as a forum for parents of children with special needs).
EY was also one of the first big accounting firms to reimburse LGBT employees for the additional federal and state taxes incurred for their same-sex domestic partners’ medical benefits.
8. Google
Headquarters: Mountain View, California
What they do: Best known for their search engine, Google provides a variety of tools and products, including Chrome and Gmail.
Employee Perks: Google has long been known as a company with a wide variety of perks to keep employees happy and motivated. Google makes it almost unnecessary for workers to leave the office — there are free meals, on-site doctors and medical services, yoga classes, massages, and backup childcare. Google even provides employees with a free concierge service to handle errands, such as picking up dry cleaning or taking a car for an oil change.
Google also offers longer maternity and paternity leave than the average American company: dads get six weeks paid leave, and moms can take up to 18 weeks leave.
9. J.M. Smucker Company
Headquarters: Orrville, Ohio
What they do: The J.M. Smucker Company produces food products within a wide family of brands, including Smucker’s, Jif, and Folgers.
Employee Perks: J.M. Smucker offers its employees a number of health-related benefits, including on-site wellness opportunities (such as health screenings and education programs) and a financial incentive for employees enrolled in the company’s healthy lifestyle program. However, perhaps the most unique perk is that the company reimburses employees for tuition costs up to 100%, with no cap.
10. Medallia
Headquarters: Palo Alto, California
What they do: Medallia enables companies to capture and understand customer feedback through a variety of cloud-based services.
Employee Perks: Medallia offers employees a unique perk: a budget for overcoming fears. Employees are given money to help them overcome a particular fear, whether personal or professional. People have used this money for everything from stand-up comedy classes (to overcome a fear of public speaking) to singing lessons.
