Once in a while we get great guest posts here at Astron Solutions's World of HR blog, but other times people send us great links. So thanks to Melanie who sent in this great link of 10 reasons employers should pay for lunches. Paying for employee lunches is a very "Silicon Valley"-type thing to do but it doesn't take a tech start-up to provide great benefits for employees that benefit your company.
A nice second option is to have a subsidized cafeteria. I'm currently working in a building with one and it makes it very tempting to just stay in the building to grab food. It's not free, but it's cheap enough and close enough to make it a great alternative. If you want employees to feel comfortable working through their lunches, then having an option in the building that is cheap, good and easy is the best way to do that.
But even if you work through your lunch, make sure that your employees know that if they need to, they can get up out of their desk, go outside and grab some fresh air. The last thing you want to do is burn out your employees and the best way to ensure they stay refreshed is to allow them to use that 30 minutes at lunch time to get out of the office, breathe in some fresh air, grab some food, and come back rejuvenated. This doesn't have to be an everyday thing; but make sure that employees know that this is an option even if there are great dining options (free or subsidized) in the building.
My boss does this occasionally. It makes the employees so happy and in the big scheme of things is inexpensive. I feel like even if it was every other week (some form of regularity) it would greatly boost morale.
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