Eating Together at Work Enhances Team Performance!

Sharing a meal is an excuse to catch up and talk.

Grabbing a quick lunch at your desk? Stopping at the vending machine for a quick afternoon pick me up? Today, Americans eat one in 5 meals in the car. There is more and more information proving the importance of eating together.

According to the Atlantic Magazine, “the dinner table can act as a unifier, a place of community. Sharing a meal is an excuse to catch up and talk, one of the few times where people are happy to put aside their work and take time out of the day.”

A new study from Cornell University shows that if we take time to eat together, there is a chance that our companies will experience more cooperation, communication and organizational citizenship. In other words places where we gather to eat, such as cafeterias, have advantages for workers and their companies.

Eating together decreases “ the formal hierarchy”. Imagine sitting to eat with a group of superiors outside of the office. An informal atmosphere can allow for more openness between supervisors, managers and colleagues. Eating is universal and mundane – and as a result a perfect leveling field.

Making food together promotes higher communications, collaboration and trust.

We have taken this concept of eating together into the kitchen.  Not only  does Workplace Commensality (or eating together) increases team performance – but making the food together also promotes higher communications, collaboration and trust.

When embarking on a recipe, all teams must communicate to produce the goal of making one delicious dish, whether it is chicken cordon bleu , parmesan risotto or apple crumble .

At Emma Fogt LLC, we offer kitchen-based experiences for the purposes of team building. Please contact us for more information for your team building event.

If you have questions about scheduling your own Corporate Team Building Event, please feel free to contact Emma for your Expert Nutritional Personal, Professional, Team Building or Corporate needs.  Contact Emma Fogt here.

REF:

Kevin M. Kniffin^a*, Brian Wansink^a, Carol M. Devine^a & Jeffery Sobal^aEating Together at the Firehouse: How Workplace Commensality Relates to the Performance of Firefighters Human Performance 2015.

Cody Delistraty, The Importance of Eating together, the Atlantic , July 18, 2014