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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

Taking away wellness benefits seems unbelievably petty and foolish. These are relatively cheap compared to payroll, but are fantastic for morale. Taking them away on top everything else feels like he’s just willfully poking his own employees in the eye with a stick for no good reason.

Also, posting this publicly feels like a very, very bad idea.

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He said that he would be providing them with the cash equivalent. I don't see the problem here.

I missed that, my mistake.

I take it you weren't moved by what he said to address this?

> By providing funds for certain things, we're getting too deep into nudging people's personal, individual choices.

Reimbursing gym membership is not a wellness benefit. It's a cheap way to attract a certain kind of employee, who will more eagerly fulfill the cult-like startup culture that companies like WeWork were trying to foster.

I live on a farm. I don't need a gym membership, my everyday life is my gym membership. What you're doing with such a "wellness benefit" is attracting young, up-starter city-dwelling kids who are willing to be punished by the typical startup working hours.

I feel very fortunate to work for a wonderful company that does not engage in any of these

> paternalistic

practices.

Providing gym memberships is kind of problematic, if not outright insensitive. Body positivity is a thing and self-love can be expressed in more ways than just this one.

Problematic how?

Seems kind of like an ableist “perk” to me. I understand that it’s one of those things that’s not intended to be, but the net result is still the same.

You really should have led with this argument because "companies shouldn't give employees gym memberships because fat people might not use them" is an awful argument but "companies shouldn't give employees gym memberships because some employees might be physically unable to go to a gym" is pretty reasonable if the alternative is just giving them money instead.

You don’t have to use the gym membership though

But now you get cash instead, and you can exchange that cash for goods and services, such as a gym membership.

This seems much more inclusionary to all employees

And those who didn’t essentially lost out on a bit of compensation.

I don’t think that promoting exercise as a component of healthy living makes a statement on body image. People who exercise have all types of bodies, all of which are acceptable.

It is paternalistic to “force” people to go to the gym to receive this compensation for their work. But there’s also plenty of research showing positive benefits of exercise on overall well-being for it to make sense for businesses to incentivize it from a worker performance perspective without body image entering into the discussion.

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