Are pizzas the secret to making your team happier?

If you ask the experts how to improve wellbeing at work, they’ll tell you that your team needs a sense of purpose, trust from their leaders and flexibility in how they work. Changes that often require leadership training, policy reviews or education programs. Changes that often require a bit of effort.

Isn’t there any easier way? Can’t you just give out some free stuff?

The experts will say that just giving out free things; yoga classes, gym memberships, pizzas etc won’t have a lasting impact on team wellbeing.

I disagree.

Used strategically, free stuff can often make a real difference.

Another company with unhappy employees after an RTO mandate

Earlier this year, I worked with a company that was struggling. They had just asked their team to return to the office a couple of days a week, and morale had plummeted. Their weekly pulse surveys had dropped from an average of 3.9 out of 5 to 2.8. Several employees were even talking about leaving.

We interviewed the team and found that most were frustrated. They were coming into the office only to do the same work they had done at home, sitting at a laptop on an uncomfortable chair and attending the same Teams meetings.

So we gave them some free pizzas and the problem was solved.

Pulse scores went back up close to 3.9 and the number of people talking about leaving dropped significantly.

Pizzas really did make their team happier

What really makes people happy at work?

According to the US Surgeon General, there are five essentials for workplace wellbeing. These are: feeling safe, being part of a community, having some autonomy, finding purpose in your work and having opportunities to learn and grow.

When this team was asked to return to the office, they lost some of their autonomy and were given nothing in return. Because we tend to place more value on things we already have, a concept known as the endowment effect, they felt a bit frustrated.

To reduce this frustration, we needed to give them something back.

Based on feedback, we decided that improving their sense of community and a little shared purpose would have the most impact. So we introduced a new wellbeing initiative.

A small gesture … big results

Every Thursday from 12.30 to 1.30, each team now meets without their manager to discuss what they need to change as a group. We provide free pizza so no one has to worry about lunch.

Six months on, the team reports that they feel closer to their colleagues and more involved in decisions that affect them. As a direct result of the ideas raised in these meetings, the company has updated its flexitime policy, improved office workstations and introduced a new rule called “No Teams Thursday” where all meetings are face to face.

Could we have had the same results without pizza?

Maybe … but I observed it had a couple of hidden benefits …

• It helped get people back into the office in the first place.

• It boosted teamwork - As a team they needed to come to an agreement on what pizzas to order (this was tricky to begin with!)

• Then, they needed to share them evenly

• As there were a limited number of slices no one person could speak all the time, otherwise they wouldn’t have got any pizza - it gave everyone an opportunity to speak

• People appreciated the gesture of a free lunch

Yes, the real wellbeing benefits came from giving the team more purpose by giving them a greater say in company decisions and by bringing them together, but the pizza was a really great nudge.

Want some other ideas on how to use pizza strategically?

Ask ChatGPT for some suggestions - Here’s a prompt to get you going …

I want to improve the wellbeing of my team by leveraging one of the five essentials of workplace wellbeing from the US Surgeon general. However I want to use pizza as a behavioural nudge to do it. Can you give me 10 suggestions? Include some standard ideas, some out of the box ideas and some amusing ideas.

Tip of the week

Decide what you want to improve in your team, whether it’s purpose, community, autonomy or recognition, and ask ChatGPT how pizza could help you give it a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Just handing out pizzas, yoga classes or gym memberships probably won’t transform your culture. But when used thoughtfully to support one of the real drivers of wellbeing, they can be a powerful behavioural nudge.