Meta Slightly Downgrades Lavish Work Perks Ahead of Return to Office
Eliminating free laundry, pushing back free dinner: The signs of a minor decline in work perks are here.
A food hall within the Meta office space still being set up in the Farley Building in New York City.
Friday, Meta employees were reportedly told that services like free laundry and dry cleaning had been cut, while the free dinner had been delayed -- all in all, several slight reductions among a lavish slate of benefits that might be a sign of things to come for the tech industry.
Every industry with employees fortunate enough to work from home through the pandemic is seeing another paradigm shift as employers begin requiring a return to offices. But workplace perks may not be what they were, as Meta employees have discovered, according to The New York Times. For instance, their free dinner has reportedly been pushed back from 6 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., past the last free shuttle and keeping employees from stuffing them in to-go boxes to store in their fridge for later.
Below the internal Meta post announcing the changes, workers reportedly complained in comments about the reduced perks and lamented the impact of the changes on workplace culture. Meta executives supported the changes and criticized the workers who pushed back, pointing to a sense of entitlement.
When reached for comment, Meta confirmed to CNET that the company would adjust on-campus services to "reflect our changing business needs." Several on-campus amenities won't return in 2022 as the company transitions to a hybrid work model, and the company said some of those services would be covered by a wellness stipend recently expanded from $700 to $3,000.
"As we return to the office, we've adjusted on-site services and amenities to better reflect the needs of our hybrid workforce," Tracy Clayton, spokesperson for Meta, told CNET over email. "We believe people and teams will be increasingly distributed in the future, and we're committed to building an experience that helps everyone be successful."
Meta delayed its return to office due to the omicron COVID-19 variant causing a spike in infections, and the company gave workers a March 14 deadline to decide whether they'd go into offices or keep working remotely as the tech industry slowly started declaring their return-to-office dates in April and May.