last year our company sent out this big excited email about how they're investing in employee wellbeing. $75 a month wellness stipend, use it for gym memberships, meditation apps, whatever you want. sounded great
to actually claim it you have to: upload itemized receipts to a portal that half the time just errors out, get your direct manager to sign off, then it goes to HR, then finance, and they only run reimbursement cycles on the 1st and 15th. miss the window? wait till next time, your problem
i tried for literally 3 months straight. kept getting denied because my Planet Fitness receipt apparently wasnt "properly itemized." i eventually just gave up and used some extra money i had to pay out of pocket for it myself
talked to people on my team and turns out barely anyone actually successfully claims it. like maybe 1 in 5 people. and yet this benefit is listed front and center on our Indeed page and our company LinkedIn
my manager had the nerve to mention our "industry leading benefits package" in an all hands last week. nobody said anything. we all just sat there
the broken process isnt an accident and we all know it. its a benefit that exists entirely on paper