TAMPA - When it comes to motivating employees to be at their best, new research at the University of South Florida reveals frontline workers, such as cashiers and retail clerks, prefer perks involving food and outings over health benefits and gym memberships.
Co-authored by Dipayan Biswas, the USF Frank Harvey endowed professor of marketing in the Muma College of Business, the comprehensive study examined five different categories of company-sponsored wellness benefits - food, social, mindfulness, physical and health - to see which ones resonated with employees in customer-facing jobs.
Turns out, free meals and events, such as happy hours or a company picnic, go a long way in inspiring workers to provide better customer service.
Published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the study found that wellness programs involving food and social gatherings led workers to feel more valued and develop a greater sense of indebtedness to their employers.
Those employees are more likely to care about their company's well-being and pay back their organizations in improved job performance, service quality and customer assistance. And better customer service translated into generating higher sales for the retailer.
"The recommendations for any business, small or large, is when you're having these wellness programs, the ones that foster nourishment and connection have stronger downstream effects on customer-related positive effect," Biswas said.
Biswas said the research showed that food had the most impact, followed by social gatherings. Mindfulness activities, such as having a meditation room, also saw positive consequences. Physical and health wellness benefits, such as a flu-shot drive or a gym membership, saw the least impact.
The article is based on five studies conducted by researchers - including a preliminary sales study at a large European supermarket chain in the Nordic region that showed wellness benefits involving food, social and mindfulness resulted in higher annual sales.
Biswas said the idea for the study grew out of the growing popularity of company-sponsored wellness programs. More than 90% of companies worldwide have some form of wellness programs and are on track to spend over $90 billion a year.
The robust findings are gleamed across multiple studies and methodologies, including a pilot study, a preliminary sales study, field studies, and an internal meta-analysis.
