The New Silicon Valley Perks: Child Care, Financial Planning and Therapy

“I’ve called the financial professional at least three times,” said Ms. Tracy, a social-media and communications manager with BlueVine Inc., based in Redwood City, Calif. “It was just really helpful to talk to someone.”

Thanks to the intense competition for talent in Silicon Valley, the tech industry has long stood out for lavish perks that made employees feel as if they barely needed to leave the office. When the pandemic sent workers home last March, those same companies had to figure out how to keep their employees happy while they worked remotely. That brought on ukulele-building classes and virtual cocktail-making tutorials, along with a host of other, more meaningful benefits.

Now many companies are dusting off their return-to-office plans as the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines kindles hope for an end to the coronavirus’s persistent spread. In addition to sorting out the details of hybrid-work models, companies are figuring out which pandemic perks should eventually go away, and what needs to become permanent to keep recruiting and retaining the best talent.

What’s emerging is a focus on offerings that yield actual value and that contribute to employees’ well-being beyond the office, whether that’s meetings with financial planners and parenting coaches or free therapy, subsidized child care and compulsory time off. When the job-search site Indeed conducted a survey of 1,000 job seekers at the end of last year and asked about the future of work, 43% of respondents agreed that the lines between work and life for most people have become permanently blurred.

But companies will also have to grapple with how feasible it is to offer such benefits long-term. How do you allocate perks fairly when some workers will be remote, some will be in the office and some will be doing a combination of the two? And how do you weigh the benefits of compulsory time off against the potential for lost productivity long after the pandemic is over?

“We’ll see a continued need for supporting people outside of the workplace in terms of their mental health, physical health and their family life,” said Erin Makarius, an associate professor of management at the University of Akron who has researched remote work. “It’s something employers will have to monitor over time and do a cost-benefit analysis.”

Facebook Inc., which said in May that it expects much of its workforce to remain remote on a permanent basis, recently started providing home-office design consultations for employees. The free sessions include advice on paint colors and how to set up furniture; employees can pay out of their own pockets for the designer to pick out accessories and décor.

With many schools and day-care facilities closed for most or all of the past year, parenting has become one of the biggest areas where employees want support and where some companies say they’ll continue to offer it. Facebook started offering expanded child-care benefits in July, and plans to continue them for the foreseeable future, according to a spokeswoman.

Not all employers have Facebook’s resources, but companies that provide nontraditional services as part of their benefits packages report they have experienced a surge in sign-ups recently.

Cleo Labs Inc., a San Francisco company that operates a family-benefits platform, expanded offerings for its 100-plus clients during the pandemic: Instead of providing support to parents with kids up to age 5, it now offers help for children up to age 12. The new package covers sessions with therapists, social workers and experts in early-childhood development. They can provide support on subjects like discipline, health and issues facing special-needs children. Cleo added clients with a total of 61,360 employees and beneficiaries in 2020.

Cleo Chief Executive Sarahjane Sacchetti says remote work is here to stay and that services related to child rearing and mental health will remain relevant to attracting and retaining working families well after the pandemic.

Pinterest Inc. recently signed on to offer their employees the Cleo benefits for parents with older children; Salesforce.com Inc. will be offering it to employees later this year.

San Francisco-based Modern Life Inc., which provides mental health, financial planning and career-coaching services under its Modern Health brand, has doubled its customer base and its employees since March of last year. The company now has more than 200 corporate customers, including BlueVine, where Ms. Tracy works, which will cover six video sessions with a “financial wellness coach” and six therapy sessions a year through the platform.

Squared Away Partners LLC signed up 140 new companies in 2020 for its remote personal-assistant service—more than triple the number the year prior, according to Michelle Penczak, the company’s co-founder and CEO. The majority of the company’s clients are in tech and venture capital. Its 160 personal assistants, who are mostly military spouses, handle tasks such as calendar management, bookkeeping, calling schools for updated Covid information, coordinating dog walkers, and taking care of service issues for online orders, she said.

Kaleana Quibell, well-being director of the tech-focused Sequoia Consulting Group, said many companies will need to figure out which employees will get what benefits once they are split between headquarters, home offices and satellite locations.

“It is not sustainable to necessarily keep all of those different programs in place,” she said. “It’ll take time to assess how to set up the allocation of funds and where those funds will come from.”

One benefit she believes is here to stay is mandatory time off. Companies have been adding holidays throughout the year where everyone is expected not to work. In some cases, they’ve been picking full weeks when the business shuts down, apart from necessary functions.

Playground Global, a venture-capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif. has implemented a one-week, companywide holiday each quarter. The firm plans to continue doing so as long as most employees remain remote. Once everyone is back in the office the company plans to ask employees if they want to keep doing it or revert to a more traditional time-off setup, according to a company spokeswoman.

Katie Neal, a Washington, D.C.-based policy manager for financial-data provider Plaid Inc., said forced time off is one of the best things her company has done for her since the pandemic began. When she returned to work after the majority of the company shut down during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, she had no internal emails in her inbox.

“If you’re taking time off and you’re stressed out about Slack or email you’re not really unplugging,” she said.

Plaid said it has doubled its company holidays during the pandemic. Every quarter it has declared a four-day weekend by giving everyone a Thursday and Friday off. It’s a practice the company plans to continue.

As much as she loved the meals she used to get in the office cafeteria at Plaid headquarters in San Francisco, which she typically visited monthly before the pandemic, Ms. Neal has come to care more about what she considers “benefits of understanding.”

Rather than providing food and other basic needs on-site, she says, “you have to find new ways to make your employees happy.”

While working remotely for Plaid, Ms. Neal has taken advantage of complimentary career-coaching sessions, therapy and employee-support groups that didn’t exist before the pandemic.

Of course, she said, there are some old benefits that she misses: “I would love to see the food and stuff continue.”

“I’ve called the financial professional at least three times,” said Ms. Tracy, a social-media and communications manager with BlueVine Inc., based in Redwood City, Calif. “It was just really helpful to talk to someone.”

Thanks to the intense competition for talent in Silicon Valley, the tech industry has long stood out for lavish perks that made employees feel as if they barely needed to leave the office. When the pandemic sent workers home last March, those same companies had to figure out how to keep their employees happy while they worked remotely. That brought on ukulele-building classes and virtual cocktail-making tutorials, along with a host of other, more meaningful benefits.

Now many companies are dusting off their return-to-office plans as the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines kindles hope for an end to the coronavirus’s persistent spread. In addition to sorting out the details of hybrid-work models, companies are figuring out which pandemic perks should eventually go away, and what needs to become permanent to keep recruiting and retaining the best talent.

What’s emerging is a focus on offerings that yield actual value and that contribute to employees’ well-being beyond the office, whether that’s meetings with financial planners and parenting coaches or free therapy, subsidized child care and compulsory time off. When the job-search site Indeed conducted a survey of 1,000 job seekers at the end of last year and asked about the future of work, 43% of respondents agreed that the lines between work and life for most people have become permanently blurred.

But companies will also have to grapple with how feasible it is to offer such benefits long-term. How do you allocate perks fairly when some workers will be remote, some will be in the office and some will be doing a combination of the two? And how do you weigh the benefits of compulsory time off against the potential for lost productivity long after the pandemic is over?

“We’ll see a continued need for supporting people outside of the workplace in terms of their mental health, physical health and their family life,” said Erin Makarius, an associate professor of management at the University of Akron who has researched remote work. “It’s something employers will have to monitor over time and do a cost-benefit analysis.”

Facebook Inc., which said in May that it expects much of its workforce to remain remote on a permanent basis, recently started providing home-office design consultations for employees. The free sessions include advice on paint colors and how to set up furniture; employees can pay out of their own pockets for the designer to pick out accessories and décor.

With many schools and day-care facilities closed for most or all of the past year, parenting has become one of the biggest areas where employees want support and where some companies say they’ll continue to offer it. Facebook started offering expanded child-care benefits in July, and plans to continue them for the foreseeable future, according to a spokeswoman.

Not all employers have Facebook’s resources, but companies that provide nontraditional services as part of their benefits packages report they have experienced a surge in sign-ups recently.

Cleo Labs Inc., a San Francisco company that operates a family-benefits platform, expanded offerings for its 100-plus clients during the pandemic: Instead of providing support to parents with kids up to age 5, it now offers help for children up to age 12. The new package covers sessions with therapists, social workers and experts in early-childhood development. They can provide support on subjects like discipline, health and issues facing special-needs children. Cleo added clients with a total of 61,360 employees and beneficiaries in 2020.

Cleo Chief Executive Sarahjane Sacchetti says remote work is here to stay and that services related to child rearing and mental health will remain relevant to attracting and retaining working families well after the pandemic.

Pinterest Inc. recently signed on to offer their employees the Cleo benefits for parents with older children; Salesforce.com Inc. will be offering it to employees later this year.

San Francisco-based Modern Life Inc., which provides mental health, financial planning and career-coaching services under its Modern Health brand, has doubled its customer base and its employees since March of last year. The company now has more than 200 corporate customers, including BlueVine, where Ms. Tracy works, which will cover six video sessions with a “financial wellness coach” and six therapy sessions a year through the platform.

Squared Away Partners LLC signed up 140 new companies in 2020 for its remote personal-assistant service—more than triple the number the year prior, according to Michelle Penczak, the company’s co-founder and CEO. The majority of the company’s clients are in tech and venture capital. Its 160 personal assistants, who are mostly military spouses, handle tasks such as calendar management, bookkeeping, calling schools for updated Covid information, coordinating dog walkers, and taking care of service issues for online orders, she said.

Kaleana Quibell, well-being director of the tech-focused Sequoia Consulting Group, said many companies will need to figure out which employees will get what benefits once they are split between headquarters, home offices and satellite locations.

“It is not sustainable to necessarily keep all of those different programs in place,” she said. “It’ll take time to assess how to set up the allocation of funds and where those funds will come from.”

One benefit she believes is here to stay is mandatory time off. Companies have been adding holidays throughout the year where everyone is expected not to work. In some cases, they’ve been picking full weeks when the business shuts down, apart from necessary functions.

Playground Global, a venture-capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif. has implemented a one-week, companywide holiday each quarter. The firm plans to continue doing so as long as most employees remain remote. Once everyone is back in the office the company plans to ask employees if they want to keep doing it or revert to a more traditional time-off setup, according to a company spokeswoman.

Katie Neal, a Washington, D.C.-based policy manager for financial-data provider Plaid Inc., said forced time off is one of the best things her company has done for her since the pandemic began. When she returned to work after the majority of the company shut down during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, she had no internal emails in her inbox.

“If you’re taking time off and you’re stressed out about Slack or email you’re not really unplugging,” she said.

Plaid said it has doubled its company holidays during the pandemic. Every quarter it has declared a four-day weekend by giving everyone a Thursday and Friday off. It’s a practice the company plans to continue.

As much as she loved the meals she used to get in the office cafeteria at Plaid headquarters in San Francisco, which she typically visited monthly before the pandemic, Ms. Neal has come to care more about what she considers “benefits of understanding.”

Rather than providing food and other basic needs on-site, she says, “you have to find new ways to make your employees happy.”

While working remotely for Plaid, Ms. Neal has taken advantage of complimentary career-coaching sessions, therapy and employee-support groups that didn’t exist before the pandemic.

Of course, she said, there are some old benefits that she misses: “I would love to see the food and stuff continue.”

“I’ve called the financial professional at least three times,” said Ms. Tracy, a social-media and communications manager with BlueVine Inc., based in Redwood City, Calif. “It was just really helpful to talk to someone.”

Thanks to the intense competition for talent in Silicon Valley, the tech industry has long stood out for lavish perks that made employees feel as if they barely needed to leave the office. When the pandemic sent workers home last March, those same companies had to figure out how to keep their employees happy while they worked remotely. That brought on ukulele-building classes and virtual cocktail-making tutorials, along with a host of other, more meaningful benefits.

Now many companies are dusting off their return-to-office plans as the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines kindles hope for an end to the coronavirus’s persistent spread. In addition to sorting out the details of hybrid-work models, companies are figuring out which pandemic perks should eventually go away, and what needs to become permanent to keep recruiting and retaining the best talent.

What’s emerging is a focus on offerings that yield actual value and that contribute to employees’ well-being beyond the office, whether that’s meetings with financial planners and parenting coaches or free therapy, subsidized child care and compulsory time off. When the job-search site Indeed conducted a survey of 1,000 job seekers at the end of last year and asked about the future of work, 43% of respondents agreed that the lines between work and life for most people have become permanently blurred.

But companies will also have to grapple with how feasible it is to offer such benefits long-term. How do you allocate perks fairly when some workers will be remote, some will be in the office and some will be doing a combination of the two? And how do you weigh the benefits of compulsory time off against the potential for lost productivity long after the pandemic is over?

“We’ll see a continued need for supporting people outside of the workplace in terms of their mental health, physical health and their family life,” said Erin Makarius, an associate professor of management at the University of Akron who has researched remote work. “It’s something employers will have to monitor over time and do a cost-benefit analysis.”

Facebook Inc., which said in May that it expects much of its workforce to remain remote on a permanent basis, recently started providing home-office design consultations for employees. The free sessions include advice on paint colors and how to set up furniture; employees can pay out of their own pockets for the designer to pick out accessories and décor.

With many schools and day-care facilities closed for most or all of the past year, parenting has become one of the biggest areas where employees want support and where some companies say they’ll continue to offer it. Facebook started offering expanded child-care benefits in July, and plans to continue them for the foreseeable future, according to a spokeswoman.

Not all employers have Facebook’s resources, but companies that provide nontraditional services as part of their benefits packages report they have experienced a surge in sign-ups recently.

Cleo Labs Inc., a San Francisco company that operates a family-benefits platform, expanded offerings for its 100-plus clients during the pandemic: Instead of providing support to parents with kids up to age 5, it now offers help for children up to age 12. The new package covers sessions with therapists, social workers and experts in early-childhood development. They can provide support on subjects like discipline, health and issues facing special-needs children. Cleo added clients with a total of 61,360 employees and beneficiaries in 2020.

Cleo Chief Executive Sarahjane Sacchetti says remote work is here to stay and that services related to child rearing and mental health will remain relevant to attracting and retaining working families well after the pandemic.

Pinterest Inc. recently signed on to offer their employees the Cleo benefits for parents with older children; Salesforce.com Inc. will be offering it to employees later this year.

San Francisco-based Modern Life Inc., which provides mental health, financial planning and career-coaching services under its Modern Health brand, has doubled its customer base and its employees since March of last year. The company now has more than 200 corporate customers, including BlueVine, where Ms. Tracy works, which will cover six video sessions with a “financial wellness coach” and six therapy sessions a year through the platform.

Squared Away Partners LLC signed up 140 new companies in 2020 for its remote personal-assistant service—more than triple the number the year prior, according to Michelle Penczak, the company’s co-founder and CEO. The majority of the company’s clients are in tech and venture capital. Its 160 personal assistants, who are mostly military spouses, handle tasks such as calendar management, bookkeeping, calling schools for updated Covid information, coordinating dog walkers, and taking care of service issues for online orders, she said.

Kaleana Quibell, well-being director of the tech-focused Sequoia Consulting Group, said many companies will need to figure out which employees will get what benefits once they are split between headquarters, home offices and satellite locations.

“It is not sustainable to necessarily keep all of those different programs in place,” she said. “It’ll take time to assess how to set up the allocation of funds and where those funds will come from.”

One benefit she believes is here to stay is mandatory time off. Companies have been adding holidays throughout the year where everyone is expected not to work. In some cases, they’ve been picking full weeks when the business shuts down, apart from necessary functions.

Playground Global, a venture-capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif. has implemented a one-week, companywide holiday each quarter. The firm plans to continue doing so as long as most employees remain remote. Once everyone is back in the office the company plans to ask employees if they want to keep doing it or revert to a more traditional time-off setup, according to a company spokeswoman.

Katie Neal, a Washington, D.C.-based policy manager for financial-data provider Plaid Inc., said forced time off is one of the best things her company has done for her since the pandemic began. When she returned to work after the majority of the company shut down during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, she had no internal emails in her inbox.

“If you’re taking time off and you’re stressed out about Slack or email you’re not really unplugging,” she said.

Plaid said it has doubled its company holidays during the pandemic. Every quarter it has declared a four-day weekend by giving everyone a Thursday and Friday off. It’s a practice the company plans to continue.

As much as she loved the meals she used to get in the office cafeteria at Plaid headquarters in San Francisco, which she typically visited monthly before the pandemic, Ms. Neal has come to care more about what she considers “benefits of understanding.”

Rather than providing food and other basic needs on-site, she says, “you have to find new ways to make your employees happy.”

While working remotely for Plaid, Ms. Neal has taken advantage of complimentary career-coaching sessions, therapy and employee-support groups that didn’t exist before the pandemic.

Of course, she said, there are some old benefits that she misses: “I would love to see the food and stuff continue.”