Given the still-tenuous state of the economic recovery, many companies have looked for ways to keep their employees happy without resorting to pay raises, according to the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.
Westlake Village Inn human resources director Roxanne Stevenson told the paper that “we try to combine growth and development with fun. It is a retention strategy. It has been and it always will be. We’re not corporate so we can be a little more creative.”
Stevenson’s employees, reports the Business Journal, are taken to learn how to press olive oil as part of their incentive package. The paper also quotes the president of the National Human Resources Association’s Los Angeles affiliate, Joshua Spitz, as saying that the largest increase he has seen in employee incentive practices has been in the area of “blending personal perks with the professional.”
Other experts have speculated that even companies with relatively sound bottom lines are hesitant to pay out substantial cash bonuses for fear of incurring the same type of highly negative publicity earned by some Wall Street firms just after the news of the subprime crisis broke. This makes non-cash incentives a more attractive possibility.
