Why employees hate ‘pizza parties’ but HR loves having them
moneycontrol.com
moneycontrol.com
Later on in my career, I worked at JPMorgan at a tech center and they brought in a local ice cream food truck. I was like great, it's hot out and ice cream would really hit the spot. So I stood in line with hundreds of other people for about 30 minutes or so (which was honestly was just too long, but sunk cost fallacy, etc...) and I got up to about 3rd in line. Then I heard someone say, "It's not free ice cream, you have to pay for it." I was like, no way, that's crazy. Why would they advertise an ice cream party where everyone has to buy their own ice cream? So I stayed in line and sure enough, it was like $6 or so for some ice cream. I didn't buy any, I just walked away.
Imagine one of the world's most wealthy corporations being so cheap that they set up an ice cream party but have the employees pay for it themselves.
I think you missed the whole point.
The point of pizza parties as exemplified in the article was to commemorate purely monetary milestones. Your boss rakes in a few millions, and all you get is a pizza that you need to share with coworkers? That's bullshit.
But hey, some people like the bones that their boss throws at them.
Sorry, that's a bullshit excuse to avoid having to pay employees.
The very blog post from this discussion explicitly touches the issue of perceived value. Everyone seeks to maximize the value that they generate from their work. That's why salary is the single most important factor in deciding whether a job is worth it's and that is why yearly bonus and salary reviews are the single most important factor in retaining employees.
Why is anyone trying to fabricate this idea that getting paid is not the single most important reason why most of us work?
For the overwhelming majority of jobs, you get paid only what's in your contract. If that number is not enough, fine, renegotiate it if you are able. But employers cannot be expected to pay you more than you're entitled to.
https://salesandmarketing.com/psychology-behind-unexpected-r...
What? You're making those claims. You're coming with bullshit excuses like "expectation of more money that nobody agreed upon". This blend of bullshit talk doesn't pop up when some unexpected event hits and everyone is suddenly expected to "be a team player", and crunch time hits and the boss expects everyone to "go above and beyond". You better believe this investment road goes both ways. Being a team player means getting a share of all team wins, and a cold slice of pizza ain't it.
> For the overwhelming majority of jobs, you get paid only what's in your contract.
You're talking like yearly bonuses or performance reviews don't happen, and no one receives paid bonuses ever. Why are you pretending that employees don't get compensated by the value they create?
What? No, it does not. If I create value for my employer, I better be compensated accordingly. If I don't then my employer is very quick in firing me. I can even be a top performer and get the axe, as the recent firing wave hitting FANGs demonstrates.
You keep your cold slice of pizza. I need to get compensated by the value I created and being forced to join bullshit HR events is not a compensation.
If you believe you should be paid proportional to your work, then do freelancing or have your own company. Just don’t cry over a contract you willingly signed and didn’t read.
If 95% of my income is salary, don’t expect the same motivation out of me as the CEO.
And the salary I receive every month...
You get a salary everywhere you work. Do you do volunteer work for a living?
If I explicitly and directly work on something that makes my boss richer, you're damn sure I want to be rewarded by the value I brought to the company. The salary is what I charge to be in the building, but if I get my employer to actually hit a compensation milestone you're damn sure I want a cut of it, and a warm feeling inside that my boss is richer along with a slice of pizza mandated by HR is absolutely not it.
That is the definition of having a job. Why do you think you are asked to do things at your job?
If your company passes a major financial milestone, yes, it's time to celebrate - but it should also be a time to hand out a bonus to those who made it possible in the first place.
I always just pretended to like those only for the sake of keeping my employment.
Management got upset that people weren't staying in one place to eat and talk, so they made it mandatory to stay in the room for anyone that was eating.
It was pretty clear then that the pizza wasn't a reward for employees, and was something intended to achieve some other purpose (e.g. teambuilding, work discussions, etc.).
Until then, these sorts of low cost rewards deliver value. Only you can fix this. Only you can ruin pizza parties for everyone.
The reality is that they’d offer nothing given the choice between something real and something like a pizza party.
No number of pizza parties equals an annual bonus that matters. So enjoy the small things. It’s what's available. The rest is between you and whomever authorizes your promotion/bonus budget.
Or just switch jobs. Tends to be easier for everyone involved.
The only value these events generate is the Potemkin stuff: providing a dedicated crowd to a higher-up, and marketing material for HR.
There's the issue to me. Have all the pizza parties you want, but I hate the undertones that you're not a team player if you don't show up to a voluntary function after work hours.
What kind of party is it if you aren't paying me to be there?
When I was younger though (and child free), I'd jump at these sort of events, and loved them. A company I used to work for wrapped up about 6pm, except Friday when you were still expected to be around until 6, but there were beers and soft drinks plus snacks from 5pm. Most people would still end up talking work, and plenty of us would still be there talking work (in various guises) until 7pm or later, and would carry on to the pub to do the same if we fancied it. But I loved the fact it started in 'working hours' and that the snr staff would all get involved. Was a great icebreaker and helped move silos between teams and departments.
Now I'm older, if it is outside of working hours, I have to see the benefit in it for me.
I think this is the key point. After hours parties only focus on one demographic (young and/or without children). Some non-zero percentage of the workforce will not fall into this category. People organizing such parties should not be surprised that such people don't show up.
Now, some companies do have after-hours holiday parties, but those generally feature a higher level of food than pizza -- also booze.
Those aren't nearly as common as they were years ago, though (too much liability from the booze factor, I reckon).
So maybe the people in these pizza parties just don't like people.
Getting salary improvements involves HR and all dots go budgeting and such.
Now what might be moderately interesting is giving managers the permission to raise salaries by pizza amounts. Eve $5 a week maximum is only $260 a year but I wouldn’t complain.
is the IRS going to actually care? probably not, unless it was systematic and notable, but see: https://www.irs.gov/government-entities/federal-state-local-...
>Cash Benefits
>Cash is generally intended as a wage, and usually provides no administrative burden to account for. Cash therefore cannot be a de minimis fringe benefit. An exception is provided for occasional meal or transportation money to enable an employee to work overtime. The benefit must be provided so that employee can work an unusual, extended schedule. The benefit is not excludable for any regular scheduled hours, even if they include overtime. The employee must actually work the overtime.
> Meal money calculated on the basis of number of hours worked is not de minimis and is taxable wages.
(this stuff is why some managers will just buy pizza for everyone from their personal money, and never bother expensing it, paperwork is not worth it)
We get some anecdata about one person who didn't want a pizza party and would have preferred cash or coupons.
The rest of it is just some waffle about what some HR people think, and some wild speculation that it's because senior people get an ego boost from it.
Not worth your time.
Why do you presume employees like pizza parties?
What leads you to believe that HR-imposed mandatory, non-paid gatherings after hours are something enjoyed by employees?
Those who already want to gather after hours to socialize are already doing it, without needing HR to be involved.
I repeat: what leads you to presume this is something employees enjoy? I mean, is it conceivable to you that any random person prefers to be forced by HR to attend an event on their own personal time instead of spending it with their loved ones, or even doing something they love?
Just pointing out that for those people who are passionate about pizza parties and whether employees like them or not, the article is not helpful.
> Amit Sharma, currently an HR leader in a multinational IT consulting firm, who has dealt with employee rewards for more than five years, said there is a golden rule for any benefit. If it doesn’t fall under the three categories listed below, always pay cash.
> If the “perceived value of the benefit is greater” than what the company pays it should be a benefit. For instance, health insurance is usually expensive, so, if a company offers it, employees value it more. If a company wants to “give a message” using a benefit like a concierge service (travel bookings and tours) it sends out a message: Just focus on work. We’ll take care of the rest. Wellness-related benefits showcase a firm's desire to promote healthy habits.
> “So, if a Pizza party is for engagement with no clear objectives, it is a waste of money. Just pay the cash. But if it serves a purpose then they should consider it,” Sharma said.
English is not my first language, but this seems harder than average to understand. I'm curious if native speakers have the same difficulty, or it's just me.
> said there is a golden rule for any benefit. If it doesn’t fall under the three categories listed below, always pay cash.
When looking to give something to employees that is not a raise of their salary, you should meet one of the following three criteria and if you can't then default to giving them a cash bonus.
> If the “perceived value of the benefit is greater” than what the company pays it should be a benefit. For instance, health insurance is usually expensive, so, if a company offers it, employees value it more. If a company wants to “give a message” using a benefit like a concierge service (travel bookings and tours) it sends out a message: Just focus on work. We’ll take care of the rest. Wellness-related benefits showcase a firm's desire to promote healthy habits.
Money can buy things but not all the things -- convenience, the ability to buy as a group, leveraging connections that an organization has are all things that are more valuable to an employee than cash, and they will realize this.
> “So, if a Pizza party is for engagement with no clear objectives, it is a waste of money. Just pay the cash. But if it serves a purpose then they should consider it,” Sharma said.
If you want the employees to hang out with each other and use pizza to pretend it is a benefit and not a forced engagement, then you are going to be disappointed because employees are not stupid (even though you were in charge of hiring them a bunch of smart ones slipped through), so just give them cash and they will appreciate that and not feel like you are treating them like suckers.
It's only a thing because managers are rarely introverts.
Please just stop.
Get a bunch of pepperoni, some cheese, and a couple of weirdo ones. I hate showing up to these things a few minutes late and all that’s left is some “white pie” trash or a pizza with so many toppings that it’s incoherent and soggy.
I mean fine maybe get some kind of vegan gluten free thing but honestly if you’ve made those choices you sort of sacrificed pizza. Don’t make everyone else suffer. Or give them a salad.
You need to keep it simple otherwise you’re back where we started. Most people like pepperoni pizza. Most everyone else is covered with cheese. Vegans can eat a salad.
The way this kind of thing is distributed is a power law. There’s a thin tail of weirdos but most everyone fits into the pepperoni/cheese dichotomy. We over optimize for the thin tail of weirdos and this is why we have 30 variations of pizza most people don’t want and only a few good ones that get hoarded immediately.
Why must we all suffer because a couple people decided to be difficult?
Edit: oh and I forgot those quarterly parties that I and three more buddies that were working in a customer's offices used as a way to launder the unused food tickets.
The entitlement is insane. Your wage is your reward for your work. That's the deal you agreed to. Arguing that bonuses aren't good enough is wild.
Extroverts are estimated to be anywhere from 50% to 74% of the population. That coupled with the fact that employees are less likely to quit a company that they have social engagement with in the office means pizza parties aren't likely to go away anytime soon.
The profits are obviously very many times the cost of the pizzas, for one thing, let alone the unpaid overtime of attending.
They should at least be thrown during working hours, and preferably accompanied by a meaningful financial bonus.
I like pizza parties better when no one shows up and the organizer asks “Who will eat this delicious pizza?!” and I get to keep it all for myself.
Problem is, where I live the industry got infected with a bullshit fitness/healthy eating virus, and all the events I used to like now serve fruits and salads.