This $3.5 billion company is paying employees to socialise after 3pm

A US-based company is paying its employees to hangout with each other after 3pm. The plan is called 3-3-3 perk and has been introduced by cloud-based security firm Verkada. As per the programme, three or more employees go out for food and drinks after 3 pm at the company’s expense and each employee is allowed to spend $30. Employees are recommended to use the perk once or twice a week as CFO Kameron Rezai told Business Insider, “The traditional way to do this is happy hour. We thought, can we do it better?”

The $3.5 billion California company started the programme in April last year. Since then, 1,800 of its employees have participated in it at least once, it said.

CEO Filip Kaliszan said, “The idea is it’s the afternoon and three people go out and hang out together, chances are you’ll talk about something that’s relevant or work-related and ultimately that will benefit us.” These kind of interactions are important for a company like this so that it stays competitive in the industry at a time when their rivals are tech companies that are worth $100 billion, he added.

Although, there is one little requirement of the 3-3-3 programme- employees have to share a photo of their hangout session on their “3-3-3” Slack channel.

“It wasn’t about the money it wasn’t about the budget. It was about everyone knowing that this is something they can do and then everyone getting excited about it,” Filip Kaliszan said.