When Christina Le posted generally on LinkedIn about mental health, burnout, and work-life balance, she didn’t expect her company to respond. Le, the head of marketing at social media content creation platform Slate, had offered one small suggestion for executives: “If companies are refreshing benefits this year, here’s a free idea: Add a cleaning service stipend.”
While wellness stipends and gym perks “are fine,” she wrote, “not everyone wants to spend their limited free time on a treadmill. For a lot of us, a clean home does more for our well-being than another obligation.” Le argued a home-cleaning perk could be more “practical. It’s human. It takes one thing off the list.”
And much to her surprise, her company not only responded, but quickly acted to add cleaning services as a benefit for employees.
Le told Fortune she ”genuinely didn’t” expect the company to respond that way, especially since she had just started at the company only a few weeks ago.
“You hear a lot of organizations talk about valuing their people and prioritizing culture, but Slate actually demonstrated it in a very real, very immediate way,” Le said. It wasn’t performative. They didn’t overthink it. They just listened and acted, which says a lot about how seriously they take their team.
In fact, it only took the human resources team at her company one day to message Le to to let her know they had seen her suggestion and “we loved it,” and the leadership team agreed to add it as a benefit.
“It sparked a really good internal discussion, and the leadership team agreed it makes total sense for Slate, especially since we’re a fully remote team,” Pamela Lopez, a human resources specialist with Slate, wrote in an internal message to Le. Employees receive this $200 benefit once per month, and the funds are added to a Ramp card for them to use. Alternatively, employees can request reimbursement for the expense.
Eric Stark, cofounder and president at Slate, told Fortune that while home cleaning services weren’t something the leadership team had specifically discussed as a benefit in the past for his 40-person company, the idea stood out because of “how practical and human the suggestion was.”
“The takeaway is that you don’t need grand, expensive programs to make a real difference,” Stark added. “Sometimes the most impactful benefits come from listening closely to employees and removing friction from their lives.”
Aside from traditional health care and retirement benefits, Slate also offers employees $100 stipends that can go toward a home office or monthly co-working space, professional development and a $200 monthly health and wellness stipend employees can use “that genuinely improve their day-to-day well-being,” Stark said. They’ve also added an “AI enablement” stipend employees can use to explore and experiment with new AI tools.
“Rather than centralizing experimentation or prescribing a single stack, we encourage employees to try emerging tools, learn what actually works in their role, and share those insights back with the team,” Stark said. “It’s been a practical way to build AI literacy across the company without forcing adoption from the top down.”
Le’s post sparks online discussion about employee benefits
Le’s post on LinkedIn received thousands of likes and hundreds of comments—and she also shared her story on TikTok. There it got nearly 60,000 likes and sparked discussions about how companies should approach employee benefits in a modern workplace.
@bbschnook The first time posting on LinkedIn paid off #corporatelife #corporatemillennial #workingmom ♬ original sound – bbschnook
Some people who identified themselves as HR professionals commented they want to suggest cleaning services as a benefit at their own companies, and others shared how their own companies allow them to use their health and wellness benefits for things like the gym, cleaning, tutoring, estate planning, home workout equipment, and food delivery services.
Le said the response she’s gotten both from her company and followers has been “incredibly affirming.”
“Work is hard,” she told Fortune. “We spend an enormous amount of our lives doing it, and it’s difficult to stay motivated when your relationship with your job feels purely transactional.
Especially working in tech, she added, her company is in a “privileged position to rethink what meaningful benefits actually look like—and to keep evolving them as people’s lives and needs change.”
Rethinking health and wellness benefits
In the past few years, many companies have tried adding health and wellness benefits to appeal to employees to keep them happy. While that works for some people, not everyone wants to spend their free time at a gym, and have other things in mind for what would really help their health and wellbeing. In fact, a 2025 employee benefits trends report from ADP shows people prefer customizable benefits over generic plans that don’t need specific needs, and the human capital management company recommends regularly asking for employee feedback on the benefits they need and want.
“Many wellness benefits are framed as adding more to your schedule—go to the gym, book a class, make time for therapy,” Le said. “Those things matter, but they don’t remove the everyday mental load people are carrying. Your house is still messy. Dinner still needs to happen. Childcare logistics don’t disappear.”
Instead, offering benefits like cleaning services helps reduce the things people have to do during their 5-9, rather than piling more on. There is a wealth of neuroscience and psychology research showing a clean home can help reduce stress.
“When you take something off people’s plates, you give them real breathing room,” Le said.
