Culture is not bread and games
In the Roman empire, all you had to do to keep people in the big cities happy is to give them bread and games – basically, keeping them fed and entertained so that they’d be happy and distracted.
As Marie says, companies around the world are shifting the focus from “bread and games” to offering more than just compensation to keep their employees happy.
She mentions Google as the top example of a successful corporate culture. Google famously provides free breakfast, lunch and dinner for its employees, among other perks. However, the original intention was not to distract the employees with free meals, but rather to save the employees time and effort on commuting to and from the offices, and to facilitate new connections between employees, increasing their happiness in the workplace.
This investment in culture has paid off for Google, as they consistently rank among the best places to work. Other companies took notice and started copying it, but Marie says a lot of these companies started offering perks only because it worked for Google – and not because they intentionally cared about the employees’ happiness.
In the end, companies need to ask themselves why they are giving benefits to their employees. If you don’t know why or if it’s because other companies are doing it – don’t do it. Figure out what you want to achieve first, and come up with a better way of doing it.
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