The job market is hot, hot, hot and retention is a top concern for companies, but it’s not just compensation that can keep employees at your company. Recently Netflix announced their new “unlimited” paid parental leave while LuLu Lemon offers a vision and goal setting program that seeks to align your personal and professional goals. Creative employee benefit programs can be a great way to keep your employees excited about working for your company. My favorite new perk takes the idea of unlimited vacation a step further. How about a paid vacation by the company that also drives employee engagement throughout the company?
Episode 50: Employee Perks & PARALLAXploration Program with Maddie Lochte
ThinkParallax is a California based creative agency that offers one of the most exciting and unusual employee perk programs called PARALLAXploration. PARALLAXploration is a unique employee engagement program that helps create an inspired, engaged, hard working team. Each employee gets $1500 to travel once a year to unknown, secret destinations all over the world. They get an extra vacation day for their trips and are asked to ‘do good’ for at least a day at their locations. The team at home guesses where each team member is traveling to and can follow the trips on social media using the #PARALLAXploration hashtag.
In this episode of the Workology Podcast, I sit down with ThinkParallax employee and graphic designer, Maddie Lochte who shared with us her experience with this unique employee perk and program. She talks with us about her trip this year to Seattle, how she used her paid time for the trip and what she spent her $1,500 budget on traveling.
I, personally, love this idea. It’s a great use of employee perks and benefits made even better by the fact that I spoke directly with an employee and not an evangelist or chief HR officer. Her responses aren’t scripted. They’re real which makes the program and the organization in my mind stand out from the rest. It’s clear they trust their employees.
Employees keep their travel destination secret revealing different clues over the course of their trip on Twitter and Instagram using the #PARALLAXploration hashtag. Employees follow along via social media, interact with their co-workers and try to guess what they location they are visiting. Just last week employee and program co-founder, Guusje Bendeler shared photos from her trip to Brazil. Most of all I love the excited in Maddie’s voice as she talks about her trip, how it keeps her engaged and how it involves the entire team. Their company blog is also a great testament to their organizational culture. You can see the spotlight they did on Maddie by clicking here. Be sure to listen to the podcast to hear more about their amazing paid travel and employee perks program and connect with Maddie on LinkedIn.
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*A special thank you to my production team at Total Picture Radio.
