Benefit or perk…words matter

Yesterday I spent some time with two different groups of people discussing words.  Yes, words.  Because they matter.  They have definitions and they also have social/pop culture connotations and they have very different meaning to different people.

The first discussion was around “work-life balance”…I’ve been debating the wording on this for a long time.  Nothing was decided yesterday except we all didn’t like the word balance…but it is still the most popular way to describe the conflict many people face daily.  Other words we threw around included:

• flexibility (doesn’t resonate)

• integration (sounds very businessy…and sort of nerdy)

• fit (we’re getting there…but it does remind me I need to exercise more…which gets me stressed about my work/life again).

We also talked about not really liking “work/life” since after all it’s all life and most of us really like our work and love that it’s part of our lives.

So we got nowhere…but we’re still talking.

Then I went to a different event where we discussed the new trendy word to describe workers:  talent.  The person I was speaking with noted how he hated that word.  I asked what word he would use and he responded with people.  Which was nice to hear.  Because he’s a recruiter and often they use words like human resources, personnel, talent, or resources which I think tend to de-humanize the recruiting process.  People is what his job is about and he knows that.  That’s nice.

Why am I thinking about and talking about words so much? Because recently I went to Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For list and was checking it out.  And I noticed something glaring.  In 2008’s list there was a tab to click on for companies that offered the “Best Benefits.” In 2009’s list that tab had been replaced with “Best Perks.” And as I said…words matter.

Benefit:  a service (as health insurance) or right (as to take vacation time) provided by an employer in addition to wages or salary

Perk (from perquisite): a privilege, gain, or profit incidental to regular salary or wages

And under the tabs, some of the categories included are healthcare and work-life balance.  So I guess the folks at Fortune used to think of these as a right and now they consider them a privilege.  Interesting choice of words especially when considering the Conference Board’s recent findings on employee job satisfaction and the times we live in with the debates/elections of the past couple weeks and the speech that will be given tonight.   At least I find it interesting…you?