Wage wars

The Perk Wars are raging across US.

With cutthroat competition for talent and a sizzling job market in Silicon Valley and beyond, tech companies are seeking to attract and retain employees by pretty much spoiling them rotten.

The valley has always been a fertile breeding ground for workplace goodies, championed famously by Google with its gourmet cafeterias and on-site massage rooms. But in these talent-hungry times, Google seems almost stodgy compared with startups like the crowdfunding platform Tilt in San Francisco, where employees after a year on the job get a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world. Or real-estate giant Zillow, which offers free overnight shipping of breast milk from nursing moms on business trips to their homes. Or even software behemoth Salesforce, which recently held a “Miracle of Mindfulness Day” in which experts equipped “employees with mindful tips to help them through their work day.”

Millennials are getting a ton of “bennies,” thanks in part to all the startups whose mission is to deliver cool perks for other startups. Executives at Blueboard, which helps GoPro and others reward their employees with mind-blowing experiences, are seeing explosive growth.

“Companies are realizing that millennials really care about perks,” said co-founder Kevin Yip. “ And they’re looking for more and more ways to keep employees excited and to keep them from leaving the company for another.”

With its belief that employees prefer experiential benefits over financial ones, Blueboard provides perks for clients like lessons in stand-up comedy or the chance to be James Bond for a day, complete with rented tux, a sky-dive and lessons in making the perfect martini.

Companies are trying to outdo each with perks, said Meg Virick, a business professor at San Jose State University, because wages, at least nationally, haven’t risen dramatically. “So these perks are taking up a bigger and bigger chunk of the total compensation offered to employees.”

Part of the attraction to employers, she said, is that “they’re revocable if the company gets into a financially tight spot; you can offer yoga classes one day and stop them tomorrow. You can’t do that with wage and salary structures.”

More companies are offering financial perks specially tailored to young millennials coming to work in a part of the country grappling with soaring rents and home prices. With some new hires carrying huge student debt, the financial picture can seem overwhelming.

As Richard Cordray, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, put it: “Some of the initial research on financial education in the workplace already suggests that a financially capable workforce is more satisfied, more engaged, and more productive for their employers.”

San Francisco-based Sindeo Mortgage helps its 75 employees with — you guessed it — low-cost home loans. Staples is using vampire-themed games to get employees excited about money-management and investing in a 401(k). And a firm outside Seattle called Pacific Market Research provides its employees with financial skills training.