More employers are offering free lunches and snacks to lure employees back to their offices and worksites. As Wall Street Journal workplace columnist Rachel Feintzeig recently wrote, if a company is offering free lunch to those who come back, then "that's a sign they want you there."
Companies offering a hybrid mix of onsite/remote work arrangements are hesitant to force employees to return but are trying to motivate employees to come back onsite for collaborative, productive work, said Stefania Mallett, co-founder and CEO of ezCater, an online marketplace for business catering.
"Food brings people together like nothing else can," Mallett said. "Post-COVID, workplaces must intentionally rebuild their social fabric. … We've had companies tell us their attendance doubles on days they provide meals."
During the first week of May, ezCater surveyed 600 business leaders at companies with 200-plus employees that went fully remote during the pandemic and are now planning, or have begun, bringing workers back onsite. The results showed that 83 percent of respondents saw food at work as a critical piece of a return-to-office strategy.
Food, Work Culture and Team Bonding
Among other findings from ezCater's survey:
- 93 percent of those in leadership roles said that more employees show up on days when free food is provided, and 81 percent cited free meals and snacks as "the best" incentive for workplace attendance.
- 85 percent of business leaders said lunchtime is when team members have the greatest opportunity to bond, while 65 percent said socialization during lunch breaks was critical for team building.
Some meal-sharing practices may not yet be tenable, however, as 57 percent of catering decision-makers said it is not currently safe to offer shared food amenities, such as a communal refrigerator or microwave. Social distancing also is keeping many workers from sharing catered meals at common tables.
Paula Cloghessy, chief people officer at Translate Bio, a biotech firm headquartered in Lexington, Mass., uses ezCater's Relish platform to let employees choose from a daily selection of individual meals from local restaurants, delivered to the worksite. The firm subsidizes the cost of the meals, up to an amount the firm selects.
"We have established many practices and policies that mitigate risk and put employee safety first during the pandemic," Cloghessy said.
[Related SHRM article: The IRS Says Let Them Eat Snacks]
An Affordable Benefit
By keeping employees onsite for lunch, an employer that provides a $10 lunch to workers can increase these employees' onsite productivity by 15 minutes before and after lunch, which "effectively pays for itself," contends Fooda, a provider of office lunch catering services.
"While not every company has the budget to afford a free daily meal to their employees, the benefits of free food at work are still within reach for almost every business," according to the Fooda blog. A once-per-week catered meal can give a boost to overall job satisfaction, or, alternatively, "providing free coffee and bagels in the morning is another excellent option, particularly for companies with plenty of time-crunched parents or commuters on their payroll."
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