Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

Getting benefits right is crucially important for your team and their families. You want to support the people you work with and make their lives better. Benefits allow your team and their families to stay healthy and happy and achieve their financial goals. This is where you should be spending your money. Perks are a very different matter. In and of themselves, perks are not a bad thing. Surprising and delighting your team is wonderful and often necessary. But when perks are always free, appear constantly, and are treated like benefits, your business will suffer. An oversupply of perks hurts a company’s bottom line and, contrary to popular belief, employee morale. Some people can become obsessed with what they can get rather than what they can do—believing perks to be a right, not a privilege. Then when times get tough or when the perks don’t scale, they become outraged that their “rights” are being taken away. And if the primary way you’re attracting talent is through perks, then times will absolutely get tough.