How Perk powered its biggest Summer Party yet

At Perk, culture isn’t built from a handbook or on a Slack channel. It shows up when people are in the same place, at the same time, connecting with one another. 

And while our computers and other tools keep work moving forward, even internationally, there’s a different kind of momentum that only happens in person. 

The conversations go further. Connections stick. And work feels real.

But as companies scale, bringing people together comes with a trade-off. As the internal events keep getting bigger, so does the work behind it.

Suddenly, you are chasing RSVPs, coordinating travel, managing last-minute changes, reconciling expenses… It becomes an endless stream of invisible tasks. 

We call it shadow work. And for our annual Summer Party, we decided to remove it.

So instead of managing the logistics manually, we used Perk Events and Perk Spend to run the entire experience. Not as a demo, but as a real test.

Because when you remove the work behind the work, you make space for what actually matters.

The challenge: when scale turns events into shadow work

Perk’s Summer Party is the biggest moment in the calendar. Every year, we bring the entire company together in Barcelona.

But by 2024, the scale had changed. The guest list had quickly grown to 1,400 attendees in 15 global offices. And with that came thousands of travel and expense touchpoints. 

And historically, that meant one thing: fragmentation. 

Information lived everywhere, from Google Sheets and Notion docs to Slack threads and inboxes.

Every flight change, dietary request, and hotel update became a manual task. Every update meant another message, another follow-up, and another layer of coordination.

As Miriam Pereo del Sol, our Director of Community and Workplace Experience, put it: "As we grow, the event gets bigger every year and so does the complexity behind it.”

That complexity didn’t just sit with the organizers. It would show up for attendees in too many emails, too many places to check, and too many small frictions.

We needed to shift from reacting to every detail to designing a system where it all runs together.

Perk Events: one system, total visibility

Internally, we saw people buried in tasks that slowed them down. So our Real Work Incubator team turned its focus to events and built Perk Events.

Instead of stitching together tools, everything lived in one place from people’s travel plans to RSVPs, event details, and communication.

It meant no more chasing information and no more scattered updates.

Attendees could access everything they needed in a single flow. And for the events team, that meant fewer interruptions and more control.

One of the biggest shifts was RSVPs.

What used to mean tracking 2,000 responses manually became a self-service flow. People could confirm, update, or change their plans without any back-and-forth.

As Nikita Miller, our Chief Product Officer explained, "Imagine sending out an invitation to 2,000 people and having to keep track… people would constantly change their mind; you’d then have to follow up. All of that now just happens automatically.”

That same autonomy extended to the experience itself.

The Summer Party included 16 community-led activities, from cava tasting and yoga sessions to pub quizzes and bachata classes. 

Instead of coordinating centrally, employees could choose which activities they wanted to join, with all the information in one place.

As Miriam put it, "They can decide if they want to go to the main stage with our live band or join the DJ set. Everything is there."

Perk Spend: removing the work after the event

If events are complex to run, they’re even harder to close.

Thousands of people means thousands of taxis, coffees, meals, and team get-togethers. And traditionally, that meant one thing for finance: chasing receipts, mismatches, and missing data.

As Lizzie Reid, our General Perk Events Manager, described it: "Finance teams spent too much time dealing with mismatches and hunting receipts.”

This year, we changed that with Perk Spend.

Expenses were captured in real time, directly in the app. No manual uploads. No separate systems.

As Fraser Louden, our Senior Product Designer explained, "I could snap a photo of a receipt and be done. Scanning receipts in the app was effortless.”

Behind the scenes, transactions were automatically matched to receipts and linked to the Summer Party.

No reconciliation loops. No back-and-forth.

And for finance, that meant something bigger: real-time visibility into the true cost of the event.

When the shadow work disappears, the experience takes over

When you remove shadow work, something shifts as people stop thinking about logistics and start focusing on the experience.

As Vicenç Alcalde García, our Event Manager shared, "You know the event is going well when people are just interacting… someone from Boston dancing with someone from Berlin.”

The result? A 4.8 out of 5 attendee satisfaction score.

But more importantly, consistent feedback on the fact people could forget about logistics and enjoy the moment.

The bigger shift: from managing events to running a system

This wasn’t just a company event. It was proof that, at scale, you don’t have to choose between experience and control.

When travel, events, and spend run in one connected system, the work behind the work disappears into the background.

No chasing. No stitching tools together. No firefighting. Just a system that works the way it should.

As Vicenç put it "The most satisfying bit is when everything just works, and the team behind the scenes can finally relax.”

At Perk, that’s the goal.

Not just to build the platform that powers real work. But to use it to make Perk a better place to work.