Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will once again do laundry for employees, restoring that company perk along with a few other in-office benefits at its Silicon Valley headquarters as part of campaign to boost morale.
Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed to The Standard that Meta’s wash-and-fold laundry and dry cleaning services have returned for staff at its Menlo Park headquarters as well as at other satellite offices. The news of the perk’s comeback was first reported by Bloomberg Monday.
The amenity was nixed in March 2022 as part of the company’s efforts to lean into hybrid schedules for employees, Clayton confirmed at the time, much to the chagrin of some workers. The cut made sense then: If employees weren’t coming into the office, they were probably doing laundry in between meetings. Now that workers are being ordered to come back to the office three days a week, the return of laundry service may help ease the transition.
There’s just one big catch: Employees will have to pay fully out-of-pocket for the amenity. The pricing, like any traditional laundry service, varies based on the loads employees bring in—and whether they want any dry cleaning done. Before the service was cut, Clayton said, wash-and-fold and dry cleaning services were free to employees.
Among the other perks Meta is bringing back to incentivize in-office attendance at Menlo Park, per Bloomberg: Free company dinners now start earlier in the evening to feed more employees (free lunches are already included), a company-subsidized coffee shop has opened up and, most vitally, its stash of La Croix sparkling water appears to be getting restocked more often.
The effort comes less than a year after Meta conducted two titanic waves of layoffs in November 2022 and March this year, affecting nearly 21,000 worldwide workers as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” campaign.