REMOTE WORK STILL REQUIRES PHYSICAL TEAM BUILDING

As Millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012)  become a larger percentage of the workforce, many shifts within traditional office environments have already taken place. As remote opportunities continue to flourish and are more desirable to many prospective employees, the need for occasional office togetherness is needed now more than ever.

Don’t just take our word for it though—a 2015 Cornell research study (link to study is below) uncovered many interesting and insightful bonuses of eating together in a communal-style setting. The author of the study, Kevin Kniffen, visiting assistant professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, had many fascinating things to say about some of the long-standing human traditions of eating together, “Eating together is a more intimate act than looking over an Excel spreadsheet together. That intimacy spills back over into work.” Going even further, Kevin states, “From an evolutionary anthropology perspective, eating together has a long, primal tradition as a kind of social glue. That seems to continue in today’s workplace.”

Regardless of how the world around us continues to change, the benefit of sharing meals together builds community through basic human nature.

As many of us know, there are many employee and employer benefits to remote work. Not having to get dressed, put makeup on, or make that long commute is lovely for so much of the workforce. Breaking up that physical distance is important for the relationship health between employees and can even lead to higher levels of productivity. Here is a paraphrase from Susan Kelley’s article, Groups that eat together perform better together, written for the Cornell Paper, The Cornell Chronicle: Kniffen, over the course of 15th months, led a team of conducting interviews and studying a fire department within a large city. The researchers then asked 395  supervisors within the department to rate on a scale of 0-10 the performance of their current platoon compared to other fire departments they had been a part of and how often each of those platoons ate together. Evidently, the crews who ate together most often also received higher-graded team performance and the platoons that ate together the least ended up with the overall worse performance score. Team building by sharing a meal brings employees not only closer, but stronger together as a unit.

For 40 years, LaChef has catered countless businesses in the St. Louis area. Let us help your employees get closer, stronger, and more productive together through the power of a shared meal.  

*Link to study mentioned in the post: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/11/groups-eat-together-perform-better-together