New developments in the business world have led to the emergence of companies which are communities unto themselves. These companies often provide more than just a paycheck and health care benefits to their employees. Their facilities include fitness centers, catered cafeterias, in house daycare and on site medical facilities. For companies, particularly software companies, their major asset is all their employees whose skills and productivity have improved their products. Creating spaces full of free food and perks help these companies keep employees happy and satisfied and entice them to continue working for their current company.
At RTI International in Raleigh, North Carolina, employees have access to an on-site fitness center and a cafeteria with great food. SAS Institute in Cary, North Carolina offers both on-site fitness and on-site health care as well as offering employees the option to take paid time off to volunteer. Genentech, a biotech company in South San Francisco, employees enjoy all these perks as well as paid sabbaticals and reimbursement for college tuition. This company enjoys playing elaborate April Fools day pranks on its employees to build a sense of community and corporate culture.
Although companies like Google and Facebook are famous for their employee focused facilities, these work well on a smaller level as well. RTI International has around 3,700 employees worldwide to Google’s over 54,000. However, they still feel creating a compound which caters to all their employees’ needs is an important way to do business. Their employees can join sports teams and take time out of their work day to compete in games. Their social life can be entirely focused around activities offered where they work.
These workplaces seem to be a type of intentional community. Shifting corporate culture now encourages empowering employees and giving them these types of benefits will motivate them to be more productive and in turn bring benefits the company itself. Building a community in a corporate setting is an interesting proposition, since employees do spend a majority of their lives working. More of these corporate communities are sure to emerge as business culture continues to dream of a way to improve corporate life and increase profits.
These workspaces raise interesting questions to consider. Should workplaces be spaces for intentional communities to flourish? Or are they encouraging workers to spend too much time at their jobs and hurting work life balances? What does this trend say about the relationships Americans have with their jobs, and how can we make these relationships better? Should we try to make them better?
I would agree with you that it’s a pretty interesting concept to think about enhancing a workplace as a means of changing the relationship that employees have with their jobs. However, I hardly think that the actual employees at these companies, if asked, would report that they consider their workplace life to be utopian. Installing gyms and cafeterias, although a nice touch by the company, doesn’t work to upset the overwhelmingly dystopian aspects of work-life. Long hours, stress, lack of paid leave and financial instability all characterize the relationship American’s have with their jobs. The hamster wheel of America’s corporate sector will continue on, fostering greed and inequality, despite the added comforts for employees. Upsetting this would what would be, in my mind, truly utopian. Though additional amenities may have positive effects on workers, I don’t think this is quite sufficient to spark broad change.
I would have to agree in some ways with Madison. I see your point here. I recognize that you’re drawing a parallel between the creation of livable intentional communities and the notion that an intentional community can come out of the formation or development of a pre-existing space in order to achieve a certain goal. And that makes sense. However, allowing your employees to nap on the clock or bringing in Moe’s on Mondays doesn’t exactly an intentional community make.
The purpose of the intentional community is to remove oneself from preexisting communities and/or society as a whole, and not necessarily to any end, but in order to satisfy the tenets of life that you personally believe to be important. It is highly doubtful that even the seemingly pampered employees on Google or Amazon’s staff truly identify as members of a community while at work, or would ever support a shift into that form of thinking due to their treatment in the workplace.
Though I think that to classify these workplace “communities” as intentional communities would be a stretch, I do agree that such efforts can be considered utopian. The United States is constantly criticized as having a culture that is based around the idea of “living to work” rather than “working to live”. One could assert that the lives of most Americans are dictated by their careers – but with the benefits you mention, such as fitness centers, on-site health care and volunteer work alternatives, I think these employers are taking positive steps to humanize their companies. Employee-focused companies like Google and Facebook are moving away from the model that makes workers feel as if they are just another insignificant cog in the machine. Sure, it may not be life-changing, and people will still have to do work that they may not enjoy, but at least they will have the sense that their employer cares about their well-being. In my opinion, this kind of reform is underrated and, one could definitely argue, a step towards utopian.
I agree with the above comments. Personally I work for a software company that focuses on these types of employee-focused initiatives: unlimited vacation, relaxed dress code, bring your dog to work, rooftop bar, these types of work amenities. I know for a fact that the usage of these entities is employee engagement rather than intentional community. The idea is that by offering amenities that make employees feel freer in their workplace they can innovate more effectively. In fact the software community has an idea that Create+Stimulate=Innovate. The thought process being that if you give the workers a stimulating atmosphere and offer creative individuals this stimulating workplace, then they will more readily innovate. In fact this type of workplace might be a more utopian vision for management and the BOD rather than the employee’s own IC.