In Pursuit of Profession: All in the family?

CEOs, department heads and other business leaders tend to think big when it comes to team building. There are off-campus visits to ropes courses and the now-popular escape rooms, performing community services together, even ski trips and spa weekends. The goal of these team building activities is for employees to strengthen their bonds with one another, which will make them be more productive back in the office. So on this last day of Thanksgiving break, where much of the American population spent at least some time getting together with family and/or friends to share a meal and give thanks, could the same be done to boost our work performance? A recent study from Cornell University Professor Kevin Kniffin and his colleagues attempted to answer that very question: can simply sharing a meal be a way for employees to perform better as a team? No need to spend the time to go off-campus. No need to spend the money on a ski trip. We all need to eat, right? And what do we do when we want to celebrate? We get in big groups and eat. So, if eating is such a big part of our lives, why not make it the center of a team building exercise? Makes perfect sense, right? Maybe. But then again, maybe not.

A brief history of eating and work

According to Kniffin, there has been a long history of the relationship between eating and work. “Mixing social and work relationships, archaeological evidence has indicated a long tradition of food being utilized as a managerial tool for incentivizing labor in prehistorical environments. Archaeologists and ethnographers, for example, have discussed “work feasts” as “collective work events” where food and/or (alcoholic) beverages were offered as incentives to attract labor (e.g., for harvesting crops) for one or more days. Such events are comparable to contemporary holiday parties in the sense that they are periodic feasts.” (Eating Together at the Firehouse: How Workplace Commensality Relates to the Performance of Firefighters by Kevin M. Kniffin, Brian Wansink, Carol M. Devine & Jeffery Sobal) In modern times, there are on-site cafeterias at larger firms, such as factories and office headquarters, and break rooms at mid-size and smaller organizations where people socialize during their break times and/or lunch periods. These spaces are designed to foster interaction with each other while we eat at work, which hopefully leads to stronger bonds between coworkers.

Fire and bikes

In order to conduct his study, Kniffin chose to study firehouses where firefighters not only eat “family-style,” they also plan the meals, shop for the meals and clean up after the meals together. Kniffin discovered that by engaging in all of the various functions that made up the act of sharing a meal, the firefighters were more effective by creating a family dynamic. For example, cooperative behavior was nearly double among team members who ate with one another than those who didn’t eat together. Furthermore, in a recent Experience Life magazine article, Allen Lim, Ph.D., discussed his days as a pro cyclist and how shared meals influenced some of the teams on the tour: “I’d noticed how much more united teams became when they shared meals together; the individual athletes seemed happier, as well. It also reminded me of the meals I enjoyed growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Culturally, eating together was just what you did at every meal – and everyone shared. Sharing a meal cultivates a deep sense of comfort and belonging. Eating together is community.”

Organic or forced?

There’s no question that team building is an important part of bringing people together. Like Marie G. McIntyre, Ph.D. stated in last week’s article on office politics, “Workplaces mesh a lot of different people together with different work styles, personalities, and responsibilities into one end goal for the organization.” But here’s the catch - when people use the work cafeteria or break room to eat together, it happens organically. No one is telling them that they must eat there. No one is telling them who they can sit with or talk to. Once people feel that they’re being forced to eat somewhere or with someone, it loses the team building aspect of that activity. In fact, many employees might resent that their mealtime is just one more thing that management is trying to control.

While Kniffin’s study is beneficial to the relationship between eating and team building in firehouses, it might be hard to translate his findings to a more typical workplace. In my previous life, I worked in municipal government and, while I wasn’t a firefighter, I spent some time in various firehouses working on budgets and other administrative issues. Due to the need for firefighters to be on shift for 24 hours at a time, the firehouse is set up much like a normal house. There are bedrooms, a living room, and a full-size kitchen. A firefighter’s “office” is more like a family’s home than a typical worker’s office, and firefighters spend a lot more time together in extended periods, so firefighters have a greater tendency to act like a family unit than typical office workers. Still, what we learn from Kniffin’s study adds tremendous value to on-going challenge of building a better mouse trap when it comes to team building: as cooperative behavior increases, so does the effectiveness of the team.

Design to the rescue?

While we do need to eat several times a day and almost everyone at the office enjoys celebrating a colleague’s birthday that involves having a piece of cake with coworkers, should the emphasis be placed on other work life aspects such as office design rather than on family-style meals in order to improve team building? The tech industry has been well aware for years now that they need to have places in their offices where employees can have what Apple founder Steve Jobs called “unplanned collisions” that may spawn, at best, solutions to vexing problems or even game-changing ideas. At the least, these spontaneous meetings can and do promote a sense of togetherness that doesn’t feel forced or inorganic.

Perhaps the best way to promote a family-style office is to combine the two – design and food. At Google’s New York City campus there’s a “150-foot rule.” No office is more than 150 feet from some kind of food option - a restaurant, a cafeteria, or a break room with a kitchen – which allows a lot of unplanned collisions…and probably more than a few added pounds.

This story was originally published November 27, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "In Pursuit of Profession: All in the family?."