Many employers focus on enhancing the employee experience by offering perks beyond standard pay and benefits. While these extras require an investment of time and money, they can deliver a strong return if the perks are genuinely valuable to employees and used as intended.

There are employees who intentionally take advantage in most workplaces. I worked at a company that recognized their employees were working a lot of long days, so they decided to provide an afternoon snack Monday through Friday. This included healthy options like fresh fruit.  Most employees were very appreciative and took one snack and one beverage. However, there were a few employees who would stock up for the week, and one would do that every day.

Meta is a good example of employees taking advantage of a company perk and paying the consequence for it. The company provided a Grubhub perk to help employees who work late or work at locations where free meals are not available to them. However, some employees spent the perk on non-food items. The company did not provide the perk so employees could pay for things like wine glasses and acne pads. When the pattern of abuse was discovered, about 24 employees were fired.

Taking advantage of free food is not exclusive to Meta. There have been cases where the person in charge of ordering food for work meetings will order extra so they can take it home to their family. And there are other companies that provide snacks and beverages and employees will pack up many of the snacks and beverages to take home.

Unlimited PTO can be tricky. There was a story in the news recently about a company who ended their unlimited PTO program because the good employees weren’t taking enough time off and those employees who were less productive were abusing the time off. The abusers cause projects to be behind or create a heavier workload for their co-workers who are already busy.

These are just a few ways employees may unintentionally or knowingly take advantage of company-provided perks. Often, they don’t consider the original purpose of the perk, the cost to the employer, or the fact that overuse or misuse can lead to the perk being taken away altogether. But it’s important not to let one or two bad apples ruin it for everyone. Avoid punishing the whole team for the actions of a few.

Sources: msn.com; leadershipgirl.com