The workplace dynamics have changed significantly in the last few years. Shortage of the right talent, normalized high pay scales, and changing employee expectations are three critical areas bothering employers. Interestingly, benefits like employee meal cards are hitting this trifecta offering companies a USP to attract critical human resources.
Meal cards allow companies to provide sponsored lunches or breakfasts to employees. Around 64% of employees stated that they will consider a new employer if they offer sponsored or free meals, as per an ezCater report. Additionally, it is reported that employees who dine together build better workplace relationships that improve overall productivity.
In this blog, we will understand what entails employee meal cards, and how it can be part of your cost-effective employee benefits program.
What is an Employee Meal Card?
Employee meal cards are prepaid cards that a person can use to buy meals or food items at multiple restaurants and grocery stores. Also called food cards or meal vouchers, these provide employees with a convenient method of managing their meal expenses during working hours. Generally, employers load every meal card with a preset amount that will be deducted from the salary of the employees. One major benefit of the employee meal card is that users get tax incentives under the meal allowance clause of the IT Tax Act.
An employee meal card has four aspects:
- Issuing meal cards: Companies can begin by offering meal cards to the workforce after loading them with a specific amount as per the allowance or employee requirement.
- Using cards for payment: Employees can use the meal cards to pay for their meals or other food purchases at applicable restaurants, outlets, and food delivery services.
- Transaction limitations: Although meal cards work similarly to your credit or debit card, they come with category restrictions. That is, you can only use the amount for food-related items and non-alcoholic beverages.
- Balance tracking & digital receipts: Employees and employers can use mobile apps or online portals to track expenses via transaction history and plan their purchases better.
Why Employee Meal Cards are Cost-Effective?
Of all the benefits programs that employers can offer their workforce, an employee meal card is the most cost-effective due to reduced cost to the company in terms of budget, resources, and time. Below are some of the ways it saves you operational costs.
Simple, automated administrative process
In the traditional benefits management process, finance and HR teams must spend several meticulous hours to work out meal allowances for all employees. With the employee meal card program, however, you can eliminate several time-consuming tasks like reporting food expenses, collecting receipts, and verifying them. Instead, you can have an automated process to decide the meal allowance amount for every employee and load their cards with the amount. Employees can simply use the money to purchase food items.
Better control over spending
Employee meal cards give employers greater control in implementing spending restrictions and transaction limits. Since these cards are designed for meal allowance, businesses can limit usage to restaurants, groceries, and other similar outlets. So that employees can utilize their funds for their intended purpose. These functionalities allow businesses to ensure compliance with industry standards and other regulations.
Significant saving opportunities
Employers can leverage tax deductions that come with employee meal card programs. In addition to offering tax benefits to employees for meal allowance, even employers can leverage tax breaks by consulting with tax professionals. Further, the meal allowance that companies offer is deducted from the employee’s salary, which means there is no extra cost to the company for the employee meal card program.
Increased employee productivity
With employee meal cards, employees get a convenient and flexible method to get their meals. It means they don’t have to worry about cooking for themselves, nor do they have to rely on cheap and unhealthy food options. This in turn will help employees focus better on their work, improving their productivity, which ultimately helps in driving revenue and profitability.
Boost employee morale with Zaggle SAVE employee meal card – The Zaggle Zinger Card
Employee meal cards demonstrate the company’s commitment to the well-being of their employees, making it more than a perk. However, to ensure you maximize the ROI on meal cards, you must pick a solution that gives you all the features to make a holistic meal card program. For this, we recommend Zaggle SAVE meal cards. These are designed to improve your employee experience and satisfaction through an intuitive and widely accepted meal card. Some of the features of Zaggle SAVE are:
- Completely 100% RBI and IT-compliant.
- Universally accepted at any VISA or Rupay category merchant
- Mobile access to track expenses, check balance, and plan budget
- Automated approval workflow for faster fund transfer
- Chip-based card for enterprise-grade security
Learn more about Zaggle SAVE here.
