A recent New York Times article highlights new approaches businesses are taking toward employee benefits. Evernote, a digital note-taking service, provides free housekeeping services every other week to each of its 250 full-time employees. Internet giants Facebook and Google provide new parents $4,000 and $500, respectively. In the medical sciences field, Genentech and Stanford School of Medicine provide employees take-home meals or in-home dinner delivery. Consulting firm Deloitte helps employees find backup caregivers for their aging parents and grandparents.

These non-traditional benefits are aimed at increasing employees' ease of life outside working hours. Moreover, they aim to benefit not only employees, but also their families. These perks, according to a UCLA compensation expert and management professor, represent an attempt by businesses to offer employees non-financial benefits that will provide them time and peace of mind.

Employers anticipate that these benefits aimed at reducing employees' stress levels at home will have positive effects in the workplace. As Evernote CEO Phil Liblin stated, "Happy workers make better products." Dr. Hannah Valentine of Stanford remarked, "If you're coming home at the end of the day exhausted and you have a pile of cleaning to do, it's the kind of things that leads rapidly to burnout, and burned-out physicians don't give the best care."

Although some compensation experts question whether these benefits help businesses attract and retain talent, the businesses showcased in the article believe they are beneficial, and interviewed workers responded positively to the perks.

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