We couldn’t–so we bit at the press release, slyly titled “Bare Naked… Security Professionals.” Dot-coms will do just about anything for publicity in the current business environment, but as publicity stunts go this one was pretty good, especially when the company actually has a logical reason for having the sauna in the first place. SSH, which makes Internet security software, is the American arm of a Finnish company. And the Finns are crazy about their saunas. In a country of 5 million people and the more than occasional arctic blast, there are 2 million of these steam baths. Homes have them, apartment dwellers share them, even businesses sport them alongside bathrooms and showers. SSH CEO George Adams, a Florida native, admits to having been weirded out the first time he saunaed with fellow board members at a company picnic outside Helsinki. The colleagues sat together in the sauna–naked–then charged down a steep hill into an ice-cold lake. “People have nothing on,” Adams says. “Then you walk right out and you’re in a meeting with these people.” On the other hand, he notes, “it makes negotiations more open.” Well, yes.
Boasting about perks used to be a mainstay of Silicon Valley’s boom times. Start-ups brought in masseuses every week, organized expensive outings to Hawaii and Las Vegas, even lured prospective hires with sparkling new BMWs. There were “life coaches” to help employees balance home life and work, extravagant gyms, on-site dentists and dry cleaning, classes on topics from landscaping to ballroom dancing, video arcades and–did we mention?–stock options. Many perks were the first cutbacks when the boom came crashing down with the Nasdaq last April.
SSH’s sauna represents a pull in the other direction. The hot room isn’t gender-blind: male and female employees take turns. And everyone wears towels–or at least they say so, for the record. Several of Adams’s U.S. employees are from Finland, and they lobbied the CEO to install the sauna when the firm opened new offices earlier this year. He says he was initially skeptical, and a bit taken aback by the $9,000 price tag. But seeing how saunas enlivened the business environment in Finland, he changed his mind. “It’s such an energizing thing in a stressful period,” he says. And employees who are interrupting their day to stew in the sweat box are working late anyway. His only gripe: many cubicles in the office are now draped with wet towels.
The Finns at SSH boast that the sauna is one of the few authentic models in the Bay Area. The whole thing, right down to the water bucket and ladle, is made of blond European aspen wood. Rocks heat up on top of an electric stove, and saunaers pour water on the rocks, producing bilious clouds of steam. There are even birch leaves on hand, which the Finns call vihta, to brush away dead skin and get that healthy glow. The ultimate point of the sauna, though, is to sweat out the impurities in your skin. Then, if you’re an SSH employee, you take a shower and get back to crunching code.
Most of the company’s workers sing the praises of the steam bath. Anne Carasik, a Unix programmer, says she saunas while caught up in big deadlines, and finds herself refreshed and recharged afterward: “You get out and say, ‘I can think now’.” The only problem, she says, is that it takes about an hour to heat up the rocks and prepare the sauna for use. Ilmo Kotaja, a marketing exec from Finland, saunas every other day. “Saunas are of utmost importance for Finnish firms. They are a big part of the national feeling.” Who says Silicon Valley can’t learn new tricks from other cultures?
