You know when companies are feeling the pinch: they start taking away all those little extras, the little perks that make the job all cosy and fluffy. You know, the free coffee and  biscuits in the morning, the gym passes, after-work drinks on the company’s card, subsidised rail travel, the office party… it’s easy to get used to all those little treats because they make us feel special, wanted, and loved. They motivate us. But what happens when those perks are suddenly taken away, as is happening in many companies at the moment?

Unfortunately, perks are the first thing to go when times are tough. Perhaps managers think you should feel lucky you’ve got still got a job at all, but that doesn’t help when you’ve become accustomed to certain expectations. However, a company is under no obligation to continue with the perks that you enjoyed when you first started working there. According to one article, Google employees didn’t receive the whole of their holiday bonus last year and lost out on the annual company trip to Disneyland. Apparently, at Merrill Lynch, first-class domestic travel has been cut back, while at Goldman Sachs workers now have to seek out their own soda and bottled water after free supplies were stopped.

While nobody takes a job in the first place because of the perks that come with it, it can be quite de-motivating when these perks are taken away. “Generally, perks are fantastic and people want them rather than not,” says Michelle Bayley, a Certified Professional Life and Career Coach, “but there is a whole range of other motivators if you look for them. It’s about saying, ‘ok, we’re in a recession, what else motivates me about my job?’ You need to dig around a bit to find out what motivates you about work, and then try to incorporate more of that into your work.”

This might be having more autonomy in your role and enjoying a greater degree of freedom to make decisions. It might be to have more of an intellectual challenge in your job, or it could be that you want to focus on leadership and how to inspire a team. The next step is then to talk to your line manager to find out how you can shape your role to include these goals. A good line manager will always be willing to listen and help you shape your career so that it suits both you and the business.

At the end of the day, it’s about taking responsibility to motivate yourself. When all those glossy little extras are peeled away and your job is suddenly laid bare, rediscovering what motivates you about your work can be quite enlightening and can ultimately show you how you really feel about your work.