Employee benefits for technology companies are often focused around making people stay at office longer: Foosball tables, game rooms, on-site training rooms, gourmet chefs, hell, some even offer laundry services. We don’t do any of that (although we do have a ping-pong table in a back room that gets wheeled out for our bi-yearly meetups).
Instead we focus on benefits that get people out of the office as much as possible. 37signals is in it for the long term, and we designed our benefits system to reflect that. One of the absolute keys to going the distance, and not burning out in the process, is going at a sustainable pace.
Here are the list of benefits we offer to get people away from the computer:
- Vacations: For the last three years in a row, we’ve worked with a professional travel agent to prepare a buffet of travel packages that employees could pick from as a holiday gift. Everything paid for and included. Having it be specific, pre-arranged trips — whether for a family to go to Disneyland or a couple to tour Spain — has helped make sure people actually take their vacations.
- 4-day Summer Weeks: From May through October, everyone who’s been with the company for more than a year gets to work just four days out of the week. This started out as “Friday’s off”, but roles like customer support and operations need to cover all hours, so now it’s just a 4-day Summer Week.
- Sabbaticals: Every three years someone has been with the company, we offer the option of a 1-month sabbatical. This in particular has been very helpful at preventing or dealing with burnout. There’s nothing like a good, long, solid, continuous break away from work to refocus and rekindle.
To come up with the best ideas, you need a fresh mind. These travel and time-off benefits help everyone stay sharp. But it goes beyond that. Even the weeks when people are working full-on, we offer benefits focused around keeping everyone healthy in other ways too:
- CSA stipend: We offer a stipend for people to get weekly fresh, local vegetables from community-supported agriculture. Eating well is good, cooking at home is good, doing both is great.
- Exercise stipend: Whether people want to take yoga classes or spend money on their mountain bike, the company chips in. Eating healthy goes hand-in-hand with getting good exercise. And we sit down for too much of the day as it is, so helping people be active is important.
These benefits form the core of our long-term outlook: Frequent time to refresh, constant encouragement to eat and live healthy. Pair that with the flexibility that remote working offers, and I think we have a pretty good package.
It’s always a real pleasure and a proud moment when our internal Campfire lights up with an anniversary announcement. Like Jeff celebrating 6 years this month, Sam celebrating 8 years and Ann 3 years last month.
We ultimately want 37signals to have the potential of being the last job our people ever need. When you think about what it’ll take to keep someone happy and fulfilled for 10, 20, 30 years into the future, you adopt a very different vantage point from our industry norm.
Brian Goff
on 06 Jan 14I personally cringe every time I see a shop trying to recruit people with “Check out our ping-pong table, pool table, awesome view, free drinks, and beer on tap”... When I’m at work I want to work. When I’m done with work I have a family to go to.
Ping-pong and beer couldn’t possibly steal me away from my family.
Peer
on 06 Jan 14Vacation is what always gets me. In North America you get so little of it and have to “earn” more through years of service. Often it takes 10 or more years to acquire 4 weeks (20 days), assuming your company even has such a policy.
This affects families in ways that many people don’t think about. At the beginning of your career you may have a new family and no vacation time to spend with them. This is most likely when your kids are young and they want to spend time with mom and dad. When you finally earn enough vacation time to spend meaningful time with your family, your kids may have grown up enough that they would prefer not to spend time with their parents. Its an unfortunate paradox.
Geb
on 06 Jan 14This is fantastic. End.
Lars Dyrelund
on 06 Jan 14Setting the standard. As always.
Frederic
on 06 Jan 14All in all very well thought out benefits, sounds like a great working environment!
Just wondering, is there a particular reason you do the 4-days week only during summer? Have you considered doing that all year?
DHH
on 06 Jan 14Frederic, it’s worked for us as a change of seasons. In the Summer, more time to be outside. In the Winter, people tended to stay inside anyway. It’s also something to look forward to from either direction.
Non
on 06 Jan 14This is really nice, I wish more tech companies would follow this way.
How about taking care of loneliness which comes from working remotely without seeing other people frequently?
I understand the benefits of remote working, but especially for a person who doesn’t have a family, this must be an important problem.
Paul Redmond
on 06 Jan 14Personally my favorite one is the paid for travel packages. Amazing.
Luke Jernejcic
on 06 Jan 14Way to lead David! I hope other companies take note. I really hate the startup culture that leads to high turnover and burnout. I have no desire to work for such a company. Health and family are too important.
I could only dream of working for a company like yours. If I am ever successful on my own, I will follow your example.
Mike
on 06 Jan 14The best benefits I have ever read. Hands down.
Turki Fahad
on 06 Jan 14Thanks for sharing, well thought of benefits. “Frequent time to refresh, constant encouragement to eat and live healthy. Pair that with the flexibility that remote working offers, and I think we have a pretty good package.” Yes you do :)
Andreas
on 06 Jan 14In Sweden we have on average 33 vacationdays (includes national holidays). 5 vacations weeks in mandatory by law. Lots of people have 6 weeks. The average for EU is 25 vacation days. Its always strange to tell americans about this. They are really getting screwed.
Joel
on 07 Jan 14My thoughts are same Andreas, I find it amazing America has so little holidays. In Australia we get 20 days mandatory leave plus public holidays every year, but sounds like you get an even better deal in Sweden!
Tabita Green
on 07 Jan 14My salary is exactly a third of what I used to make now that I work in higher education, but we have free yoga on site, CSA share reimbursement, and close-to-European vacation days. So worth it.
(4-day summer weeks would be cool though.)
Thanks for being awesome and pushing the envelope.
Nick
on 07 Jan 14@37signals
A lot of benefits you give your employees would be considered “fringe benefits” in the US and the employees would have to pay taxes on the market value of said benefits.
Has that been an issue for your company yet?
Also, what happened to the program where you would pay for any extracircular employee activities like DHH racing his company sponsored sports car or Matt taking pilot lessons?
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/893-workplace-experiments
Peldi
on 07 Jan 14It all sounds nice, but how on Earth did you convince your accountants to let you do those? As Nick said, those all sound like fringe benefits. I know you use a lot of independent contractors…how do you justify (again, in accounting) those expenses for people who (at least on paper) are not on the payroll?
Sam
on 07 Jan 1437signals sounds to me like they’ve got the right idea. Rest and and lifestyle balance I think are priceless.
To be perfectly honest, I would take a huge pay-cut to sample such benefits.
For a lot of people (particularly those that are passionate about doing good work), it’s less about the money and more about providing the best work they possibly can.
With a setup like this, I bet the turnover rate would plummet at most companies.
Berserk
on 07 Jan 14@Peldi: Why should the accountants have any input into how 37s spends its money?
@Beserk
on 07 Jan 14Typically you would rely on an accountant to tell you what is and isn’t legal when it comes to spending corporate money. For example, it is illegal for the owner of a company to use company money to pay for his wife’s car and claim it is a business expense. I know someone who did this, got audited, and paid some hefty fines to the IRS.
I agree that all these benefits are fantastic ideas. But, I too am curious about the accounting on paying for vacations for employees, mostly because I would like to do that with my company. I doubt we’d get an answer on this board and will have to consult an accountant to see how this is justified as a business expense.
Jason Fried
on 07 Jan 14Also, what happened to the program where you would pay for any extracircular employee activities like DHH racing his company sponsored sports car or Matt taking pilot lessons?
Still do that, too.
DHH
on 07 Jan 14(Although the racing was never company sponsored. I sponsored the company by advertising it on a race car ;)).
DHH
on 07 Jan 14Do indeed contact your accountant on how to deal with benefits of all sorts. In my opinion, these benefits are well worth it, even if you have to also pay taxes on the privilege of granting them (which will all depend on how you’re setup).
Mike
on 07 Jan 14What CSA do you use?
Alex Gregianin
on 08 Jan 14Considering 30 days off-work as a benefit sounds just weird.
America should get a little bit better at that. Down here in Brazil, we get 30 days by law + a whole bunch of holidays (around 10 per year).
The four day summer weeks sounds just awesome. It would be a great fit for everyone I guess.
Devan
on 08 Jan 14Some of the things like ping pong/foosball tables, snack bar etc. are really a benefit for decompressing during the work day. Personally I enjoy having a rack of guitars behind my work desk, so when I have finished a particularly arduous programming run and am waiting for a compile or migration, I like to lean back and grab a guitar so I can ‘switch off’ for a few minutes and take my brain to different place for a while…
Mark
on 08 Jan 14The arranged travel is nice, but if you’ve already got a remote working culture in place, how do you know an employee isn’t working while drifting through Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride already anyway?
Kinda seems redundant.
David Andersen
on 08 Jan 14Lot’s of time off is nice but I’m glad we don’t have a set amount mandated by law in the United States; there are negative tradeoffs to such a mandate.
Abdu
on 08 Jan 14@David Andersen What are the negative tradeoffs? There are lots of employees who have vacation days and are afraid to use them because they are afraid to appear as lazy. Mandated vacation will make sure employers won’t retaliate or take action against employees.
As for the Foosball & Ping Pong table comment by DHH, if I play for half an hour during my work hours, I think it’s fair I would stay 1/2 hour later to make up for that time. I am not staying later to work more above my number of regular hours. My employer gets his 8 hours and I get some play time and work my 8 hours and have some fun. Everyone is happy. Some companies advertise these benefits to show that they are fun and easy going place.
Mike
on 08 Jan 14@David I really like your approach & 100% agree that “focusing around making people stay at office longer sucks”.
Unfortunately, a lot of things you’ve mentioned are quite expensive for a small startup or a consulting company. But of course, it is a matter of creativity and willingness. You can definitely find many other alternatives with a modest budget.
For instance, here’s what our team practices: 1. Weekly out-of-office lunch with the whole team 2. Bars 3. Biannual traveling master classes 4. Summer activities: gunfire, archery, carting, paintball, volleyball and football, cycling 5. Winter activities: snow boarding
For us, it’s extremely vital that we do any kind of stuff together.
Starting a company is hard, but keeping it alive is even harder! Just in case. We’re launching a blog post series to help and guide industry newcomers and enthusiasts by sharing our (small team) past experience, ups & downs as well as every future step, experiment and achievement!
David Andersen
on 08 Jan 14@Abdu -
The number one negative tradeoff is that vacation days cost money. That money comes from somewhere. Not all employers are equally able to offer the same time off. Small companies, new companies, for example. Not all companies have the same profit margins and free flowing cash. It’s a competitive advantage to established companies to have such a law. It’s one more barrier to startups.
If you’re working for a crappy employer where it’s hard to take vacation, solve that problem for yourself. A blanket law is not the solution.
TC
on 09 Jan 14Is the sabbatical paid?
Jason Fried
on 10 Jan 14TC, yes, it’s a paid sabbatical.
Jason Zimdars
on 10 Jan 14“For instance, here’s what our team practices: 1. Weekly out-of-office lunch with the whole team 2. Bars 3. Biannual traveling master classes 4. Summer activities: gunfire, archery, carting, paintball, volleyball and football, cycling 5. Winter activities: snow boarding”
@Mike – As an employee I’d have a hard time accepting much of what you described as benefits. Sure they sound fun but you said it yourself, these are activities designed for team building so it could feel a little disingenuous to present them as perks. I cringe a little to read “it’s extremely vital that we do any kind of stuff together”. I love my job and my co-workers but at the end of the day it’s my family and friends I want to spend more time with.
The beauty of the extremely generous benefits Jason and David provide us at 37signals is that they’re aimed at keeping us healthy, sane, and happy. Rather than trying to trick us into spending more time at work and with work people they’re encouraging us to be healthier, more interesting, and balanced people. And that certainly pays off when we are at work.
Sounds like it’s working for your team, so don’t take this wrong. Just thought I’d share a perspective you might not be hearing from your team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jsORc3sPtQ
:)
Randomguy
on 10 Jan 14You really can tell when a guy from socialist Europe has infiltrated a company just to demoralize their staff… ;-)
Fx
on 13 Jan 14In France, employees have 5 weeks of holidays and work 35 hours/week. Here, I think many employers would pay for holidays to their employees, and not an army of lawyers.
I like! : “If you’re working for a crappy employer where it’s hard to take vacation, solve that problem for yourself. A blanket law is not the solution.”
Your blog is very interesting!
This discussion is closed.