Family-friendly benefits key to attracting top tech talent

By Sharon Florentine

Don’t disturb Eric Poirier between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. — he’s spending time with his family. Poirier, the CEO of Addepar, a Silicon Valley investment management software startup, makes it a point to block out “Eric time” on the firm’s publicly accessible calendar, and encourages the rest of the company to do the same.

It’s one example of a growing trend in Silicon Valley; using family-friendly and work-life balance-focused benefits and perks to attract, retain, engage and motivate the workforce, says Lissa Minkin, Addepar’s vice president of people. As IT talent becomes more difficult to find and even harder to retain, many IT companies are focusing on what’s truly important to their employees, and that means offering more family-friendly benefits instead of flashy perks like free lunch, dry cleaning, massage, ping-pong tables or yoga, according to Minkin.

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