Companies have come up with a new way to tap
into the needs of time-stressed workers trying to juggle the demands of work and
home: sell cheap, take-away dinners at the office so people can avoid the
dinner-table rush.
At Pfizer Canada in Kirkland, Que., employees
simply e-mail or phone the cafeteria with their orders for such staples as
macaroni and cheese or stew and pick it up as they leave the building.
At the Ottawa headquarters of Lee Valley
Tools, the cafeteria's hot lunch offerings have become so popular that workers
often order the leftovers for a couple of dollars and bring them home.
Take-home meal programs are being embraced by
a growing number of companies across North America, from big banks to
boutique-sized firms.
Almost half of Fortune magazine's top 100
companies provide take-home meals for their employees, often as part of a
program of "work-life balance" initiatives that also include on-site
daycare and dry cleaning, and even personal concierge services.
The meal programs might be the latest
workplace innovation aimed at satisfying modern families, but they are also a
boon to employers. Employees who eat well are less likely to get sick; healthy
employees don't take sick days and don't diminish bottom-line productivity.
Providing food at work means employers can
assuage their guilt about asking people to stay late or work through their lunch
hour.
At Bloomberg News, a financial news service,
employees working on exacting deadlines seldom stray far from their desks
because the fridges in the Toronto office are always stocked and snacks are
plentiful.
"If employees have to stay and work
late, having a supper that they can take home reduces their stress and saves
them time," says Alan Mirabelli, executive director of the Vanier Institute
of the Family.
"It is one of those things that is a
major benefit for companies for an incremental cost."
Mr. Mirabelli said take-home meal programs
demonstrate an employer has a firm grasp of what matters in employees' lives and
recognizes "that not everything can be resolved by raising pay.
"To some people, time is much more
valuable than pay," he said.
"We just wanted to make life easier for
people," says Rhonda O'Gallagher, a spokeswoman for drug company Pfizer.
"If at 4 o'clock in the afternoon,
someone decides they don't feel like cooking that evening, they can now just
order a take-out."
At another drug company, Novartis
Pharmaceuticals Canada of Dorval, Que., employees stuck late at work can pick up
a family-sized salmon pie for $7 or a litre of spaghetti sauce for $5 on their
way home.
Novartis introduced the take-home meal plan
in conjunction with a corporate Work-Life Initiative that offers flexible hours,
half-day Fridays and in-house dry cleaning and film developing.
"We know that employees really want to
spend time with their families," says Jason Jacobs, director of
communications for Novartis. "Now, instead of driving 15 minutes out of
your way to drop off dry cleaning [or] get dinner, it can all be done at
work."
He said the take-home meal plan is used by
all types of employees, but is particularly appealing to women who would
otherwise end up making dinner at home after a day at the office.
Leonard Lee, chairman and founder of Lee
Valley Tools, was overwhelmed by the reaction of employees to the cheap,
home-cooked meals provided in the cafeteria at headquarters.
"I underestimated the difficulties of
working parents who discovered that we were selling full breakfasts for $2 and
delicious hot lunches for $3 and then, if they worked late, they'd get a free
dinner -- we had people eating three meals a day in our cafeteria," he
said.
"It became so important as a solution to
one of their life problems, which was making lunches, finding time for
breakfast, and getting dinner on the table." -
Anne Marie Owens National
Post
20 January 2003
