Meta reinstates perks to entice employees back to office

Meta is changing its tune on their treatment of employees as they try to incentivise their employees to return to the office. Beginning this month, Meta employees are mandated to work onsite for at least three days a week.

These perks, which were available pre-pandemic, were cut by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as he looked to push the company into a “year of efficiency” back in February this year.  However, the company has now revived a number of these perks to boost morale amongst employees, including branded t-shirts, happy hours, laundry services, and free haircuts, as well as a new coffee bar and earlier dinners, all part of Meta’s renewed effort to lure employees back into the office.

READ MORE: Meta cites value of in-person work for return-to-work mandate

This is in contrast to Meta’s harder stance towards the return-to-office mandate, which was announced last month, which required employees to return back to their nearest physical location to work onsite. The organisation has warned that employees who repeatedly refuse to comply would risk losing their jobs, a stark difference to Zuckerberg’s earlier advocation of hybrid working arrangements last year, when he suggesting last year that as many as half of the Meta’s employees could be remote by 2030.

A Meta spokesperson told Bloomberg that while the company was bringing back some perks, “Dinner, happy hour and company swag never really went away, merely adjusted given the pandemic and budgets,” they said.