Fun Friday: Boss raffles off Tesla for returning office staff

One firm is pumping money into back-to-office incentives

BY Rachel Ranosa 07 May 2021

Is the ‘new normal’ of work turning out to be boring and lifeless? Not at real estate data specialist CoStar Group, which has found a way to get staff back into the office and add a little colour to their day-to-day routine.

CoStar hands out a cash prize of US$10,000 randomly to one lucky employee who comes into the office that day. To be eligible, however, the winner must first be vaccinated against COVID-19 and commit to working at a physical location.

While the cash prize is meant to incentivise people on a daily basis, the company is also lining up a few special prizes that are set to wow team members. These include a fully paid trip to Barbados for three employees and a guest each. If that’s not enough, one employee will receive the grand prize of a brand new Tesla Model S.

CoStar is prepared to pump money into incentivising its return-to-work programme. It predicts spending several hundred thousands of dollars until summer, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Yes, this is a lot of money, but in the context of a multibillion-dollar company with thousands of staff and hundreds of offices, it’s a drop in the bucket,” said CEO Andrew Florance. “So you can have some fun, you can incentivise people to do the right thing.”

The idea behind the prizes came after the company began preparing workers and their families for a return to normalcy. Getting people into physical locations is good for the real estate business. But when it had sponsored staff vaccinations, not many were eager to do it. “We thought, OK, we’re making it easy, how can we create a little bit of fun and excitement about it,” Florance said.