Return to Office Tips: 10 Ways to Engage Employees With Food
- By Lex Flamm
- Reading Time: 2 mins.
To succeed with your return to office (RTO) efforts, you need to offer employees experiences they can’t get at home. Identifying those missing pieces on your own can be tricky — but luckily, a recent survey has some key insights.
According to a 2023 Buffer survey of 3,000 remote workers: Nearly 45% of workers struggle with loneliness, isolation, and/or difficulties collaborating and communicating, and 37% of workers feel unrecognized by company leadership.
How can you help resolve these feelings before they lead to potential problems like worsening health, slowed productivity, and decreased company loyalty? There’s no silver bullet solution, but using fresh fruit and thoughtful snacks to create connection, facilitate recognition, and boost engagement in your office is an excellent strategy.
To achieve those things, you need to do more than simply stock your break room. Here are 10 creative return to office ideas to help you get started.
Create Connection
1. Set up snack stations to facilitate conversation and creative, spontaneous brainstorming.
2. Establish dedicated “snack breaks” when employees office-wide are invited to gather in the break room or kitchen. Consider ordering a bulk Snack of the Month to unbox together.
3. Bring in unique fruit and snacks to celebrate return to office day, birthdays, baby showers, and other milestones together as a team.
4. Pass around a fresh fruit and snack basket at in-person meetings.
Facilitate Recognition
5. Ask a manager to push a fruit and snack trolly from desk to desk, handing out tasty bites and chatting with team members along the way.
6. Welcome returning team members with delicious gifts to enjoy (and share!) on return to office days.
7. Invest in edible fruit and snack gifts to celebrate employee of the month awards, project completions, and promotions.
Boost Engagement
8. Offer in-office fruit and snack tastings where employees can share their thoughts and bring samples back to their desks.
9. Plan an in-office farmers market where your team can pick up fresh, healthy food and chat with a local farmer.
10. Schedule other engagement events that make the office more enticing like Lunch & Learns, smoothie-making sessions, fruit-focused holiday celebrations, and visits from The FruitGuys’ Banana.
Our team at The FruitGuys can help with all of these RTO strategies and more.* Ultimately, the more engaging your office experience is, the more successful your return to office efforts will be!
*Event pricing and availability vary by location.
