On-site exercise equipment. Paid volunteer time. A wall of baking tools you can borrow. These may sound like the perks some flush tech companies extend to their engineers. But as Alana Semuels of The Atlantic reports, they’re actually some of the benefits of working at King Arthur Flour, one of a group of companies that are trying to make worker well-being a priority. In a corporate climate many see as obsessed with profit (at most companies, Ms. Semuels writes, “employees come last”), will making workers happy ever be mainstream? King Arthur, Ms. Semuels explains, is a B-corporation. In order to be certified as such, she writes, “the companies pledge to think about people and the planet in addition to profit, and an outside nonprofit inspects them and makes sure they’re doing so.” “This used to be the standard way American companies treated their employees,” Ms. Semuels writes. “In the heady, post-World War II years, companies offered free turkeys at Thanksgiving and gave employees perks, hoping to recruit and retain the most talented workers. But as the pool of available labor grew, companies figured out that they didn’t need to keep employees for life: If one person left, they could hire someone else. And as activist investors pushed companies to downsize and distribute profits back to shareholders, many employers gave up on considering the needs of their employees when deciding how to run their business.”
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 10:03:06 +0000
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