WHY AREN’T WE DOING THIS: Saving the American Workplace

Kevin Perez-Allen:

The office is broken. 

Not because people don’t want to work, but because the pandemic rewired how people think about time, value, and what it means to actually show up. 

We redefined work, but never redefined the office. 

And now we’re left with empty desks, fluorescent lighting that feels like it was designed by prison architects (still waiting for Mark Zuckerberg to roll out the Panopticon office), and benefits that haven’t been updated since AOL was mailing CDs to your house.

Younger workers entered the job market expecting that cubicle farms with bad coffee and forced birthday sheet cakes were a joke, and they were right. Unfortunately, the joke is on us. Life has gotten dramatically more expensive, salaries haven’t kept pace, and somehow companies are still bragging about free LaCroix in the breakroom like it’s 2006. At least we have mostly moved beyond “Hawaiian Shirt Day”, Bill Lumbergh’s favorite office perk.

If companies value loyalty, productivity, and workers who aren’t one rent increase away from financial collapse, the benefits have to change. And not in the 2014 Silicon Valley “let’s add a foosball table” way, but in ways that make work feel like it acknowledges reality.

Imagine walking into the office knowing childcare is handled onsite. Not shoved in a basement next to the copy machines, but real, professional daycare where your kid is safe, engaged, and not just staring at an iPad all day. 

That alone would convince an entire generation of parents to come in without hesitation. It would save my wife and I roughly $4500 per month. Even if it were just partially paid for by the employer, being onsite and discounted would be a game changer.

Now picture a staff masseuse. Not the once-a-year “chair massage” gimmick where someone kneads your shoulders for four minutes in the hallway while Terry Tate, office linebacker, drills Dave from accounting who stopped to awkwardly watch. 

A real masseuse, available weekly, because every single job, whether you’re in policy, coding, sales, or HR, manages to break the human spine one Zoom call at a time.

And yes, if you’re going to force people to live in cities where rent rivals the GDP of Burundi, then you need to help them afford it beyond “Competitive salaries”. Housing stipends shouldn’t be reserved for Silicon Valley engineers or diplomats posted abroad. If location is non-negotiable, then housing assistance should be, too. You don’t have to ensure your employees all have penthouse suites in Manhattan, but look at the ratio of income, family size, and cost of living. That gives you a real picture of what employees need to thrive and show up free of economic stress.

Now, think about the time we waste outside of work just to survive. The panic march through Trader Joe’s at 6 p.m. (i’m sure they know me by name at this point), the endless cycle of laundry and dry cleaning, or the car service appointment you forgot to book until your engine light started flashing. 

Why can’t the office solve this? 

Grocery pickup should be waiting when you leave. Partner with local grocers or meal kit companies so employees can leave with groceries or prepped dinners instead of squeezing that into their nights. Even two nights per week would feel like heaven. 

Laundry and dry cleaning should be dropped off and picked up in the lobby. If there is enough demand, more local dry cleaners will start organizing pick up and drop off service. The employer doesn’t have to pay for this. They can just book the times.

In that spirit, your oil change should be scheduled by HR the same way they book your compliance training. These are not wild luxuries, they’re life admin tasks every employee is already drowning in.

Wellness is another scam companies pretend to care about while doing nothing meaningful. A dusty treadmill in the basement and a “wellness newsletter” nobody reads are not wellness. Nap pods are wellness. Meditation rooms are wellness. Nutritionists on call are wellness. Showers that don’t look like prison stalls are wellness. Nobody brags about their office treadmill. People would brag about an office nap pod.

And if you really want to fix the relationship between employee and office, start with the four-day workweek. Every serious study shows it leads to happier workers, higher efficiency, and lower turnover. But instead, companies cling to five days of half-effort while pretending Friday afternoon Slack messages are “productive.” Meanwhile, workers spend Fridays at the office desk hate-scrolling LinkedIn and refreshing the clock like it’s the final seconds of detention.

This may be controversial, but student loan repayment should be automatic. Forget the ping-pong table. I’m never going to be good enough to beat Dwight anyways. Wipe out debt. You want a generation of workers who stay? Free them from the 700-pound financial weight crushing their psychological wellbeing.

And let’s not forget learning. Companies spend millions on consultants to tell them what their employees already know: people like to learn, they just don’t like the “leadership training” or “DEI Inclusion Workshop” shoved down their throats. Nobody is paying attention during those trainings. Everyone’s just calculating how much work they’ll need to make up afterward.

Why not turn the office into a learning hub where colleagues teach each other real skills? One week it’s coding, the next it’s cooking, the next it’s guitar, and the next it’s creative writing. A workplace that doubles as a community of growth is far more magnetic than one that doubles as a warehouse of sadness (the only non-product I’ve ever seen in a warehouse is sadness, injuries, and porn).

The point isn’t just perks. The point is economics. 

When workers have more money in their pockets, they spend it. They eat at local restaurants. They join gyms. They buy things at neighborhood shops. They pay for ballet classes and tutoring and house cleaners and vacations. Every dollar employees aren’t burning on nightmare commutes, overpriced daycare, or ballooning student loans is a dollar that flows back into the local economy. That spending keeps cities vibrant. It keeps commercial real estate alive (or at least brings it back from the bloated corpse it resembles today). It turns offices into magnets instead of mausoleums.

This is good for business. It’s good for loyalty. It’s good for efficiency. And it’s good for avoiding the dystopia of an entire country of working poor clocking in just to barely survive.

The alternative is what we already have: fluorescent punishment chambers dressed up as “collaborative spaces” where nobody wants to be. If companies want thriving workplaces, thriving employees, and thriving cities, they need to stop dangling stale perks and start treating benefits as the core of economic survival.

Also, I’m gonna need you to go ahead come in on Sunday too, mmmkay? Greeeeaaaat.

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Kevin Perez-Allen is SVP at Signal Group in Washington, DC, where he leads national and international campaigns across healthcare, public affairs, public diplomacy, and policy, especially where the stakes are high and the messaging is tough. His work blends deep political analysis with creative storytelling, grounded in decades of experience and a lifelong allergy to performative nonsense.

Written by: Editor