Working at a startup is always a good news/bad news situation. Good news: you get to help build something, with other motivated, creative people, and sometimes in an environment that includes free food and a funky office. Bad news: you’re never allowed to leave the funky office to spend time with the cool people you knew before you took the job. Summer, with its siren song of beach and lazy outdoor fun, makes everything worse.
Inc.com recently ran a list of perks companies can offer workers to make up for the continued 9-to-9 grind of working at a startup in the summer. Here are a few of the best ones, and how to convince the boss to let you have them.
1. Summer hours.
Summer Fridays are often a topic of great debate among both management and staff. Sure, it’s fun to have a half day off once a week, but you have to prove you won’t do less the rest of the week, in order to persuade the boss.
What to say to get the perk: Management is usually more receptive to summer hours if workers agree to come in a little earlier or stay later. This is obviously tougher at companies without set working hours. Which brings us to our next point.
2. GSD Mondays.
This is genius idea might get you Friday afternoons off, a free meal, and an increase in productivity to justify all of the above:
“The start of your workweek sets the standard for the rest of the week. We instituted GSD (‘get sh!t done’) Mondays,” Matt Ehrlichman of Porch tells Inc.com. “We provide employee dinners every Monday at 8 p.m. for the company. As a small business, you have a low budget and an accountability to investors. Team meals pay for themselves in productivity dividends.”
What to say to get the perk: You’ll probably have the boss at “get sh!t done.”
3. Go outside.
Near a beach? Plan a company cookout. Near the mountains? Go on a hike with your coworkers. This is essentially the corporate version of those awesome school days when your teacher would let you take class outside.
What to say to get the perk: The cheapness of this benefit speaks for itself. It’s way less expensive to go outside than it is to rent space at a restaurant or bar, and it has the added bonus of not alienating people who don’t drink or who have food allergies. Your manager will eat it up. (Metaphorically speaking.)
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(Photo Credit: Melissa Salm/Flickr)
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