Let's Eat! Why you need to buy food for all your employees

At Connect Gifting we have a healthy budget that shows up on the GL as "staff engagement" but we all know what it means: F-O-O-D.

At nearly any all-company meeting or strategy session, we're eating. 5th Wednesday sales team Zoom? Get some food. Impromptu gathering at the warehouse to talk packaging? Get some snacks and $0 them out. New employee training? We're all meeting up for pizza.

We like to eat. And if you want to better engage your employees, so should you.

tl; dr: When your employees eat together, they'll stay longer because they're forming deeper connections to the company and each other. Way better than a ropes course, IMO.

Why eating together builds community

Ever since our early ancestors hunted, gathered, decorated caves and fashioned saber tooth tigers into chic coats, eating together has created faster communal bonds than nearly any other activity.

(Eating together is one of the three easiest ways to build deep community. For the other two, click here.)

Evolutionarily and biologically, this might be because the act and physical position of eating required vulnerability. Vulnerability results in trust, and trust grows connection. For our great (x100) grandparents, in order to eat they had to put down their spears and boulders. The position of eating is a position of vulnerability and our current biology can recognize and remember this.

Likewise, a meal done right has us all seated and relaxed. When we're relaxed - unlike when we have to tell everyone in a staff meeting about our favorite fruit (that also starts with the same letter as our first name) - we share more, listen better, and therefore more easily find points of commonality.

So, if as a leader, you want to set the table for staff connection and engagement, you need to literally set a table.

How to do it right

FYI a Slack message that says "Donuts in the breakroom" is not what I'm talking about. Neither is a random Papa John's order (that's only enough for every person to get one slice each). Meals should be thoughtfully and carefully planned and encouraged.

But this won't be easy.

<dietary restrictions has entered the chat>

When we plan a team meal at Connect Gifting I have to remember who doesn't do meat. And who only eats dairy when it's a full moon. Who doesn't do sugar except on Wednesday, who hates what restaurant this month, and who doesn't like to share containers.

All those details can be recorded somewhere, of course, but the simple act of picking a restaurant that can cover all the bases and giving people choice goes a long way. Better move? The link you can share for everyone to enter their order. Ninja level move? Pass the phone around so each person can tap the app.

Simply put, this level of thoughtfulness works as everyone gets what they want.

Also - set a budget. While the ROI of eating together is real and can be measured, you don't need to go overboard, especially if you're going out. Knowing you can't do everything and you're not adding an employee cafeteria on site will ensure that when you eat together it's meant to be special, respected, and intentional.

Talk with your mouth full

Eating is good, the biological anthropology of it makes sense, it's a nice gesture, but is that it? LOL of course not.

You as a leader don't have to only spring for food when you're asking people to multi-task. You don't need to keep plowing through your agenda while everyone plows through their burrito bowl.

Let the meal breathe. Give people time to chat and check in while they settle in with their entrees. See where the conversation leads. Again, our early forebears used dinner time to connect with each other after a day of rudimentary astronomy or inventing wheels. We still enjoy such today.

Or course you can use some conversation cards as prompts if the air is as stale as some leftover community bread. But over time your team will recognize the ritual and use the meal time for meaningful connection.

And then, they'll actually plan the whole thing. At that point, your job as a leader desperate for an engaged workforce just needs to hand over the credit card and collect some dining points.

Dinner is served.