When it comes to employee benefits, the buzzwords usually jump off our minds are health, disability and medical insurance, retirement benefits and paid time off, to name a few. But it has been observed that in the Silicon Valley, the new norm is to provide free food to all their employees!
It might make you ponder the obvious question; why would employees who earn on average more than a six figure income on an annual basis even concern themselves about food expenditures? The answer comes down to more than just money. Food as it stands, connects people, brings them closer together and makes the actual process of hunting for food an entirely streamlined experience.
There’s a reason the likes of Facebook and Google are investing tons of money into providing free breakfast, lunch and dinner to their employees. The single biggest means of ROI to these companies is cross pollination of ideas. Because more ideas mean a much higher bottom line for the company in the long run. What you as an employer pay for housing the logistics of an entire restaurant pays off when those employees spend extra time to ensure that your business keeps afloat.
Creativity thrives, time spent commuting to restaurants is reduced, they intermingle, share ideas and perhaps equally important is the opportunity to foster trust.
It’s a powerful psychological means of retaining top talent. Their usual thought process becomes “This company feeds me and takes care of my food. I’ll stick around and help them as much as I can!” The sky is the limit when you have such driven talent working for you!
Some convenient benefits of providing free food include
1) Health
Foods catered inside the restaurant tend to be wholesome and healthy. Healthy employees mean less time availing the sick leave and more time getting the job done. Everything on the menu is usually organic and prepared from scratch. Those processed foods will only serve to increase trips made to the ER.
2) Makes you feel that you belong
At the end of the day, we’re all working hard round the clock to put food on our tables, and when the company takes care of this fuel for us, we start becoming more attached, committed and generate the feeling of gratitude which should be duly compensated by hard work and increased dedication.
3) Workers save an incredible amount of time
Every time your workers leave the office, sit in their car, commute to their favorite choice of restaurant – they waste a few precious couple of minutes. Instead, if they were to spend all that time within the office. This increases productivity and allows for team building, giving workers the time to make chit chat, which has the surprising knack of unlocking their creativity.
4) It saves some brain drain
Where do I drive? What food do I eat? Your employees literally have thousands of choices when it comes to decision making about what goes into their tummies next afternoon. Believe it or not, this requires substantial processing power of the brain – something which your company could use down the line, not waste away on trivial food purchases.
