Recently, I was reading a piece in a national newspaper about the demise of the water cooler. It seems that in these troubled times, among the first of the corporate frivolities to go is the traditional grapevine meeting place.
The financials show that a business with approximately nine employees will spend, based on some industry estimates, anywhere from $40 to $50 monthly on a system with an 18-litre bottle. Obviously, from there – as businesses get larger – costs increase.
However, Tina Dacin, director of the Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at Queen’s University School of Business, suggests that the water cooler is more than just an easily deleted line in the accounting process. It is a symbol of goodwill and caring for those in the office.
How much value can be placed on that? Or perhaps a business would prefer to suffer the consequences of having employees continually leave or interrupt the business process with numerous out-of-office coffee and beverage runs?
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