Hunger Makes us Better Together
It’s week two on Havas Lofts and I’m starting to get into the groove of my new life at the Havas Paris Village. I’ve adopted the common practice of greeting each person in the elevator (see previous post) and I’ve got a solid lunch crew to eat in the office canteen every day.
Let’s set the scene for the lunch routine…
At about ten minutes before noon there’s chatter in the HR open space to check who’s on board to grab lunch that day. At noon sharp, everyone gathers in front of the 10th floor elevators and descends together. My new office mates understand the importance of promptness when it comes to midday nourishment and for anyone who knows my eating habits (like a small child who eats like a bird every 3 hours) knows how much I appreciate this. If I go too long without sustenance, the h-anger (hungry anger) takes over my body and I cannot be held responsible for my behavior.
I love the practice of eating together. At home in the NY office we hold a bi- monthly team lunch to celebrate the birthdays of those months. It’s great to get together, unwind, remove yourself from the workday and take time to get to know one another. More commonly however everyone eats lunch at their desk at random times. It’s been nice to participate in a daily group lunch routine.
I’d like to point out that having a cafeteria in the office is pretty cool, and makes it easy to eat together. Plus the cost of lunch is subsidized! You don’t have to leave the Village to get some grub, AND it’s cheap. At home we have the “Magic Kitchen”, free snacks throughout the day, and Fooda, a service that brings different restaurant vendors each day and you pay cash or credit. Both are nice perks but I find myself mostly ordering seamless and working through my lunch alone at my desk. Cue the sad violin music.
What makes lunchtime even better are the days when we eat outside. There’s a courtyard full of tables right next the cafeteria. Ingesting vitamin D while soaking it up, that is the dream.
I’ve been learning a lot about the Village; how the office is structured, how many agencies make up the Puteaux Village (a lot!), but most of the valuable insights have come from these group lunches. We talk about the challenges of our jobs, share suggestions for improvements and simply laugh about an observation someone made. It’s comforting to know that the struggles in the NY Village are present here too.
I look forward to lunch every day not only because I love food and my even keeled temper depends on it, but because it’s a chance for me to get to know coworkers, de-stress, and recharge.
With such positive impacts from these group lunches, I assumed there would be research on the topic. Indeed, there was. Several articles referenced a firehouse study which found that fire fighters who ate together, performed better as a team than those who didn’t eat together.
“From an evolutionary anthropology perspective, eating together has a long, primal tradition as a kind of social glue,” says Kevin Kniffin, one of the study’s authors and a visiting assistant professor in Cornell’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. “That seems to continue in today’s workplaces.”
Other research found that companies where employees ate lunch together had closer teams, increased productivity, better retention rates, and higher employee satisfaction. #WOW
Whether it’s building a cafeteria, or supporting regular team lunches, any effort to promote group lunches will positively impact employee performance and happiness.
Havas NY, when are we getting that café? : )
