Being What you Eat: the Impact of Workplace Cafeteria Food on Employee Attitudes
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Being What you Eat: the Impact of Workplace Cafeteria Food on Employee Attitudes Nicholas A. Smith 1,2 & Larry R. Martinez 1
& Lucy
Gettle 3
Received: 22 December 2019 / Revised: 25 June 2020 / Accepted: 8 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Although providing employees with food options onsite is an increasingly common practice in contemporary workplaces, there is a relative lack of research that focuses on the psychological impact this food, and particularly the nutritiousness of this food, has on employees. In two complementary studies, we consider onsite cafeteria food nutrition in the context of social exchange theory and hypothesize that nutritious food acts as a signal of organizational support, which in turn predicts positive employee attitudes. In Study 1, participants randomly assigned to a hypothetical work situation in which relatively healthy food was provided in the onsite cafeteria reported higher perceived organizational support and, in turn, higher satisfaction and lower turnover intentions. In Study 2, we replicate this pattern in a sample of employees who reported on the nutritiousness of the food in their own workplace cafeterias. Furthermore, Study 2 included a measure of food nutrient characteristics, to complement mere perceptions of food healthiness. Together, these studies provide initial evidence that improved organizational cafeteria nutrition can be related to improved psychological attitudes among employees. Keywords Health . Nutrition . Turnover intentions . Job satisfaction . Social exchange
A large and growing body of research has examined strategies to improve health and well-being within workplace contexts (Bandoni et al. 2011; Rongen et al. 2013), with a particular focus on improving the quality of food in workplace cafeterias (Raulio et al. 2005) and enticing employees to make healthier food choices (Pridgeon and Whitehead 2013; Volpe et al. 2015). Although these initiatives have demonstrated that even small * Larry R. Martinez [email protected]
1
Department of Psychology, Portland State University, 317 Cramer Hall, Portland, OR 97201, USA
2
School of Business, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA
3
University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, VA, USA
Occupational Health Science
changes in the way food is provided or presented can result in healthier choices (Thorndike et al. 2014), several barriers, including cost, accessibility, and time or workload constraints have also been identified (Thomas et al. 2016). Despite this attention to food in workplace contexts, no research to date has examined the potential psychological consequences associated with employees being provided healthier meals at work, which is an important omission as organizational science research is dominated by evidence that shows that employee attitudes can influence motivation, engagement, performance, turnover, safety behaviors, and a host of other critical outcomes (Cotton and Tuttle 1986; Harter et al. 2002; Iaffaldano and Muchinsky 1985; Meyer et al. 20
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