Business English vocabulary: perk
Welcome to 2-minute English! Today's word is perk.
One of the perks of my job as a salesperson is that I get to travel around the world.
Perk.
In business contexts, a perk is an informal advantage or benefit that you get because of your job. In everyday English contexts, a perk is some kind of advantage or benefit in general.
We have two authentic examples for you today. The first is from CNN, from an article describing how a company gives its employees free towels to use in the company gym. The benefit, the perk, is that the employees save time and energy.
As the economy rebounds and the labor market tightens up … companies are once again trying to find new ways to attract and retain talent. And time-saving perks seem to be the answer.
Here is the second authentic example, about perks in everyday English. It's also from CNN.
Bourbon, Spam and ski weekends are just some of the things you can get free or at discounted prices as long as you're a shareholder. Shareholder perks are a pleasant, if monetarily insignificant, diversion from the normal headaches of owning most stocks. Unknown to many shareholders, they are sometimes eligible to receive free or discounted goods and services from the companies whose stock they own…While none of [the] perks are good enough reason to buy a company's stock, they do spice things up a little.
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