Without a doubt, food is a principal component of everyone’s life. What your employees eat impacts their health and productivity. While there are more popular employee benefits like health insurance, retirement, and childcare, corporate meal benefits are becoming more common, especially as companies welcome employees back to the office.
Meal benefits are popular with workers and employers because:
- Offering meal allowances reduces employee turnover.
- It increases the likelihood of employees recommending your company to their colleagues and new talent.
- Healthy eating boosts productivity, which is essential in the workplace.
- You’re more likely to attract and retain top talent who want to work where they feel appreciated by the company.
- It is a tool for building a stronger cooperative team.
- Corporate food allowance can boost employee morale.
Whether you’re looking to help your employees feel more appreciated, boost productivity, outrun your competitors, or get the best talent, incorporating a meal benefit program into your company is a step in the right direction.
Here is a little more insight into how meal benefit plans help attract and retain employees while also helping to create an engaged workforce.
Why meal benefits help attract and retain employees
Edenred’s Ticket Restaurant is a meal benefit that offers several corporate dining options. It allows employees to buy meals and food items from restaurants, grocery stores, and food delivery service providers. The major advantage of this meal allowance is that it serves both the employer and the employee. The employer determines everything from the cost to where food can be purchased. At the same time, employees can enjoy some form of flexibility in their meals.
Setting up a program like Ticket Restaurant provides several advantages for employees. For example, meal benefits save employees time and money. Having company-paid meals available saves employees from finding and preparing food themselves, especially when working on big projects.
Meal benefit programs also promote healthy eating. Work can sometimes get hectic, so you stay working for long hours only to stop and find out you are hungry. What often happens is that you end up grabbing junk food like fast food as a quick and easy meal option. A meal plan in your workplace means that you don’t have to wait till you’re extremely hungry and tired. It allows employees to order a meal and have it delivered in no time.
Skipping meals can negatively impact your health. If your employees skip meals, this hinders their own health and company performance in the long run. With meal plan benefits, you can easily avoid this problem by offering company-sponsored meals.
Meal benefits expand the number of food choices for employees. Unlike catered meal plans, where the options are extremely limited, you can choose where and when to get meals that suit your taste and lifestyle.
Meal benefits are not only helping employees live better lives. Food is also helping companies, directly or indirectly. First, eating right helps increase productivity. Having a meal plan benefit in place for your employees not only makes their work-life balance easier; it also shows that you care about them, increasing the chances you’ll create an engaged workforce. By going above and beyond to help them, they will be happier and increase their willingness to work. Simply put, happier workers are more productive employees.
While an employee’s salary is important, benefits often work as incentives to attract the top talent. This is especially important when candidates are considering multiple job offers with identical salaries. If you want to attract top talent to your business, you must make irresistible offers. A meal benefits plan for employees is one effective way to do that when you can’t match the salary.
According to the Talent Market Report, 37 percent of large companies and 17 percent of small companies offered meal allowances in 2019, before the pandemic, when companies couldn’t match a candidate’s desired salary.
Meal benefit plans are also becoming more popular as remote and hybrid workforces increase. Having catered meals on-site for companies is now a thing of the past. Now, there are people with various dietary needs working all over the place. Catering to these unique needs with on-site meals is not possible. However, with a comprehensive corporate meal program like Edenred’s Ticket Restaurant, employees have a meal plan that fits their lifestyle.
Add meal benefits to your benefits package
Edenred’s Ticket Restaurant is a comprehensive meal allowance program to add to your employee’s benefits list. When you add meal benefits, your employees will receive a prepaid card to be used at local eateries, restaurants, grocery stores, and through food delivery apps. They can do all of this seamlessly and with ease while you control the amount they spend and the options available to them.
A meal plan benefit is a cost-effective way to make your workers happy, boost productivity in the workplace, and help recruit new employees. Schedule a meeting today, and we’ll be happy to review all your options with you.
