There have been multiple studies on the effect of the healthy team lunch, such as by Harvard Business Review*, American Cornell University* and the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO)***. Time and time again, results show a positive outcome on productivity and job satisfaction, among other benefits. Are you looking for a good reason to provide your staff with good lunch? We'll give you five!

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1. Restart your office, and rebuild team culture

Offering team lunch is one of the great ways to help bring your staff back to the office, and rebuild your culture. After months of remote working with little contact with their co-workers, and new colleague introductions done over Zoom, many employees look forward to return to the office. Office lunch can be a great enabler to bring staff back and help rebuild your office culture. From our experience, on the days lunch is provided, the attendance jumps close to 100%! Who would say no to delicious and COVID-safe company sponsored meal!

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2. Teambuilding

Did you know that by eating together, oxytocin is released into your body? The substance, also called cuddle hormone, causes positive vibes in social interaction. How nice it is to go through last weekend’s adventures with a colleague from that other department. Get to know each other better in an informal way. During the joint lunch break, (work) relationships and team spirit are strengthened. Kniffin's research shows that cooperation improves significantly when the team ties are strong. And job satisfaction improves. As quoted in the Harvard Business Review, the firefighters that had lunch together reported it was a critical enabler for their team to work collaboratively.

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3. Re-energise your team, and improve productivity

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The fact that we actually become more productive from a healthy lunch in good company can be seen in the results of the research by HERO. And we’re talking about a possible increase of no less than 25%! What a boost in performance. And thanks to that talk with that colleague about this new project, genius ideas are emerging again and creativity is flowing.  
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4. Retain and attract key talent
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For a relatively low cost, team lunch is an amazing benefit that helps you retain your key staff as well as raise your company profile for recruiting purposes. All current and potential employees evaluate your company against others; and very often there is a certain level of expectations in terms of what company does for the staff well-being.
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5. More health = less absence

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That actually makes a lot of sense. Healthy eating is of course important and a prerequisite for good health. And as discussed in the previous points, the joint lunch break also has a lot of positive influence on the well-being; less stress, new energy and more (job) satisfaction. Providing good lunch will contribute to better physical and mental health of employees and help reduce stress.

The focus on staff well-being is even more important now. Yes, it is a pretty challenging time, this COVID crisis. Many employees still work from home, sometimes for days without any contact with colleagues. Working from home can be very lonely, and does not help team culture and collaboration. It becomes even more important to pay some extra attention to the well-being, involvement and satisfaction of employees.  

Even when most staff work from home, you can offer a weekly "collaboration day" with the team lunch provided in the office. Or, for work-from-home situations, there are still some creative ways to offer lunch - e.g., send lunch to employee homes and organise a virtual lunch meeting.

For delicious lunches delivered to your office, be it Sydney or Amsterdam, Melbourne or London, Berlin or Rotterdam, contact Oh My Lunch and we will be happy to assist! requests.nl@ohmylunch.com

Sources:

* Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2021/01/take-your-lunch-break)
** (Cornell University, 2015, pp. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/11/groups-eat-together-perform-better-together)
***(https://journals.lww.com/joem/Abstract/2013/01000/Self_Rated_Job_Performance_and_Absenteeism.3.aspx)