Google Offers ... Really Generous Death Benefits

Google is famous for its generosity to employees, but Forbes has found a perk that Googlers get after they depart the company—and this life. If any of Google's 34,000 or so workers die while employed by the company, their surviving partner will receive half their salary every year for the next decade. All stocks will be vested immediately and children of dearly departed Googlers will receive $1,000 a year until they are 19, or 23 if they are in full-time education.

The death benefits, introduced last year, apply to all Google employees, no matter when they joined the company. Google can afford to be generous, but what makes the death benefits stand out among the company's many perks is the fact that it will do nothing to increase worker productivity or creativity unless they start clocking in from the afterlife, Forbes notes. "Obviously there’s no benefit to Google," says Google's chief people officer. “But it turns out that the reason we’re doing these things for employees is not because it’s important to the business, but simply because it’s the right thing to do." (More Google stories.)