The return-to-work wars are still raging at offices across the country, but one company is deploying a rare weapon: Cash bonuses.
Cameo, a video messaging company famous for celebrity birthday wishes and pep talks, is not mandating that employees return to the office. Instead, it’s offering workers a $10,000 annual raise to come into its Chicago headquarters four days a week. On top of that, company leadership is offering workers who live outside commuting territory an additional $5,000 bonus if they move closer to the main office. And finally, Cameo will be providing free lunch to workers every day of the week, as well as free parking and access to an on-site gym.
“What we really wanted was for working at HQ to be a FOMO-inducing perk,” Cameo CEO and co-founder Steven Galanis tells Fortune.
The company’s approach is noteworthy in that rather than demanding workers return to the office by threatening them with consequences, the company is leaning into an incentive structure to lure them in. Cameo’s announcement comes at a time when RTO mandates have become sources of contention between leadership and employees at some of the largest Fortune 500 companies, including JPMorgan, Amazon, and Dell.
Cameo hopes this model inspires other businesses to incentivize employee choice rather than coerce workers back into physical offices. “There’s just no question that our team is better than the sum of its parts when we have a lot of people under the same roof,” Galanis says.
But it’s important to note that Cameo’s small workforce is an important part of its decision to offer large cash rewards to employees who comply with its RTO mandate. At its height a few years ago, the company employed around 400 workers, according to Galanis. But that number has dropped to 50 employees total, 26 of whom are based in the Chicago area. All 26 of those employees took the RTO deal, and raises are slated to take effect this week.
“There were different times in the company’s history where maybe we couldn’t have afforded to do this, or maybe we didn’t even have enough density of our employees in particular markets to make this a reality,” says Galanis.
Doing right by a workforce that has already survived several rounds of layoffs also played into Galanis’ choice to give out cash rewards for people coming back to the office, rather than instituting a requirement.
“We didn’t want to do anything punitive to these people,” he says. “Because they’ve been through all the big battles with us, and they’re still here,” says Galanis. “We love them, and we want them to be here for a long time.”