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Why employees hate ‘pizza parties’ but HR loves having them
- SpaceL10n 4y ago[flagged]
- qtzfz 4y ago[flagged]
- marginalia_nu 4y ago1 crore = 10 million for those who aren't all about doing the needful.
- anonymoushn 4y agoand 1 billion rupees = 12 million dollars
- jojobas 4y agoThanks for the same.
- eli_gottlieb 4y agoTL;DR: because a small one-time expense beats paying higher salaries.
- revolvingocelot 4y agoAn even shorter TL;DR-answer to the title's question is available by reading the site's domain
- VWWHFSfQ 4y agoI'm not going to read this because I kind of like pizza parties and I don't need everything ruined for me by some blogger on the internet
- arketyp 4y agoThe text is unreadable anyway. From what I gathered I think it's missing the point, which is that pizza parties are for social bonding. You don't get that by handing out $20 to the employees.
- baremetal 4y agoBreaking bread together is a very human thing do.
- sylens 4y agoI think it's also missing something pretty critical here - giving each employee $20 could be seen as kind of insulting, whereas combining each employee's $20 into a pizza party at least looks like a grander gesture
- ilyt 4y agoOr just... not have it be a reward, just social event.
- simplotek 4y ago> From what I gathered I think it's missing the point, which is that pizza parties are for social bonding. 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.
- Edd314159 4y agoTo quote Don Draper: that’s what the money is for! You already get a pre-negotiated salary and maybe a bonus plan, why is there an expectation of more money that nobody agreed upon?
- 4y ago
- leeroyjenkins11 4y agoI will always take free food. I get payed to do my job. I could see bonuses if there was a bunch of OT, but other than that, I'm fine with what I get.
- nubinetwork 4y agoIf you're buying me pizza, just let me eat in my own little corner... I could care less for "elevator talk" schmoozing, because you're probably buying the pizza only because I saved your ass from getting fired.
- bombcar 4y agoA manager can almost always directly pay for pizza from the petty cash account with no problems. 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.
- rippercushions 4y agoRaising salaries is a permanent commitment and much harder to push through. Paying one-off bonuses, though, is much more feasible.
- dagw 4y agoA manager can generally just decide to take his team out for dinner and spend $100 pr. person without issue. They most likely cannot hand out a $100 cash bonus to their team because they feel like it.
- bombcar 4y agoPart of that is the IRS can crawl very far up your company if there is unreported wages; but nobody really bothers about bonus meals even though technically there may be tax implications.
- dagw 4y agoIndeed. Paying my $100 restaurant bill costs the company ~$100. Making sure an extra $100 shows up in my bank account costs a lot more than $100 due to taxes.
- bombcar 4y agoand if your manager hands you a $100 bill, and expenses it (or took it from petty cash) now you're suddenly the recipient of tax fraud. 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-governments/de-minimis-fringe-benefits 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)
- troon-lover 4y ago[dead]
- mattw2121 4y agoTo me, the key phrase in this article was "most organisations still subtly force people to show up under the garb of networking and engagement and even fun." 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.
- baremetal 4y agoPizza parties should be during work hours. What kind of party is it if you aren't paying me to be there?
- ljf 4y agoI love networking events on company time - feels like great two way value. But put it into the evening and all of a sudden you are bumping up against my time with my family (and my hobbies). If the value is there for me, and it isn't too regular, then I'll certainly go to something out of hours, but if it is purely a social then the pay off becomes harder for me. 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.
- eestrada 4y ago> When I was younger though (and child free), I'd jump at these sort of events, and loved them. 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.
- mrweasel 4y agoI still don't know why HR loves having pizza parties, it seems like it's management who loves it. The article could use a bit of editing, it's rather difficult to read.
- Handprint4469 4y agoI'm having trouble parsing this article. Quoting: > 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.
- sylens 4y agoIt's a poorly written article, and that's not the only example. But that first paragraph is brutal with multiple, consecutive descriptive clauses
- roundandround 4y agoYes though its also written for people who speak an entirely different dialect of English that's a bit more distant than Wisconsin vs BBC.
- Eisenstein 4y agoIt is very strangely structured, but it isn't nonsense. > 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.
- twiss 4y agoIf you're in Europe, this is easier to read at https://web.archive.org/web/20230414110456/https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/why-employees-hate-pizza-parties-but-hr-loves-having-them-10411841.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230414110456/https://www.money...
- MattPalmer1086 4y agoWell, it simply doesn't answer the question of why employees hate pizza parties. 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.
- simplotek 4y ago> Well, it simply doesn't answer the question of why employees hate pizza parties. 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.
- MattPalmer1086 4y agoI don't presume anything. I'm just pointing out that the article does not answer it's own question.
- simplotek 4y agoYou're failing to reject the thesis, and somehow are presuming employees like this sort of HR-mandated afterwork get-together. 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?
- MattPalmer1086 4y agoI have absolutely no position on the subject matter. 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.
- jwie 4y agoIf you can convince everyone else at your shop that nobody perceives pizza parties as valuable they’ll stop offering them. 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.
- surgical_fire 4y ago> The rest is between you and whomever authorizes your promotion/bonus budget. Or just switch jobs. Tends to be easier for everyone involved.
- simplotek 4y ago> Until then, these sorts of low cost rewards deliver value. The only value these events generate is the Potemkin stuff: providing a dedicated crowd to a higher-up, and marketing material for HR.
- moolcool 4y agoWhich employees hate pizza parties? You get to knock off work for an hour and eat a bunch of pizza. I mean, good work should be incentivized and rewarded with money, and if it's not, that's a separate beef. Don't take that out on the pizza. The pizza did nothing wrong. Give me the pizza!
- dividedbyzero 4y agoThere are many ways to ruin this, like using a very cheap and bad pizza place. Garbage food might not matter to a 25-yo, but it would matter to me. People with severe allergies to any pizza ingredient are also pretty much excluded, you usually can't rule out contamination. Some companies do this after work, unpaid, and pressure people into staying late. One company I was at used to make important decisions over a pizza dinner in the evening and if you didn't stay, too bad, decision already taken, you just won a new project.
- moolcool 4y agoYour beef is then with unpaid overtime, or companies which don't consider dietary inclusivity. Leave the pizza out of it.
- satisfice 4y agoI want pizza now. I shouldn’t eat it, but I will.
- dividedbyzero 4y agoAnd with bad pizza. I have a problem both with bad pizza and bad culture.
- narag 4y agoNobody invited me to one of those pizza parties. The employees+bosses parties I attended were all at regular restaurants and we split the bill. Pizza/pastries is always on premises as an apology for unexpected overtime or a farewell to some employee leaving. 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.
- nlnn 4y agoAt a place I used to work we had optional "pizza parties" as a reward for employees during work hours. Then many people started grabbing pizza and going back to their desks to work, or to head out for a break, etc. 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.).
- ilyt 4y agoI'm fine with pizza. Just don't make it into "reward" for completing anything and it is fine. I sure would rather talk with colleagues and eat something for last hour or two of work rather than work.
- 300bps 4y agoPeople are different. Extroverts love social activities at work and introverts hate them. 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.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoWhen I was working at this place https://www.karnovgroup.dk/ https://www.karnovgroup.dk/ which used to be owned by Thomson Reuters (so I was there for transition), HR decided to do some outreach to accountants - one of the groups that those companies provide services for of course - after which the HR representative came and shared the anecdote that one accountant stood up during the party and announced "We didn't become accountants because we like people!" So maybe the people in these pizza parties just don't like people.
- black_13 4y ago[dead]
- ajuc 4y agoPizza-parties during work hours are fine. What I have a big issue with is the after-work team-building parties you're peer-pressured into where you have to spend your free time with people you barely know (because you work with 10 people and there's 100 or 1000 people in your company) and pretend to have fun doing random stuff with them. It's only a thing because managers are rarely introverts. Please just stop.
- shepardrtc 4y agoI worked for a medium-sized local company that had ice cream parties. Everyone loved them. They'd hired a local vendor and we'd all go down and get free ice cream and chat. Everyone was happy. 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.
- vidanay 4y agoWhy am I picturing Charlton Heston running around shouting "You have to pay for the ice cream!"
- black_13 4y ago[dead]
- vidanay 4y agoThe bigger question is: Why are there 17 "everything" pizzas, two sausage and pepperoni pizzas and one only cheese pizza for 100 people? And the first 15 people eat the three simple pizzas.
- nemo44x 4y agoI know! It’s so annoying. Why are we catering so much to the couple of weirdos that can’t just enjoy a normal pizza like everyone else? 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.
- jwestbury 4y agoSome vegetarian pizzas, perhaps, for those of us who love cheese but not eating animals and/or destroying the environment. :(
- nemo44x 4y agoI already said to include cheese pizzas. Adding some with a variety of vegetables introduces unnecessary scope creep. Now it becomes which vegetables, etc. Vegetarians can have cheese pizzas. 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?
- jacknews 4y agoThrowing a mandatory 'pizza party', after-hours, to celebrate a financial milestone seems quite tone-deaf to me. 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.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoWhat? I love pizza parties. I love events serving pizza. 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.
- satisfice 4y agoI love pizza parties and I am not in HR, so the article is plain wrong. 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.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoI don't like them. I will just go home and tell others to have fun. More pizza for others and less bored faces. I guess it is win-win for everyone.
- peter-m80 4y agoI loved the pizza fridays in my company.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago> However, Gupta expected more. “Offering pizzas is the last thing an employee wants for a milestone that is purely monetary. What about cash rewards? At least shopping coupons,” she complained, adding that the HR could have come up with a more “useful prize” for her hard work. 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.