Workplace wellbeing is essential for employees as they prefer to work with companies that put in effort to improve their experience. As per a report by Indeed and Forrester, only 25% of Indian employees experience well-being at their workplaces. This comes as a shocker since keeping employees satisfied is the easiest way to boost revenue and efficiency. Having realized this, companies are looking for different ways to provide employee benefits.
In this pursuit, employee food cards have emerged as a convenient option to provide meal allowance to employees. However, quite a few companies are yet to leverage meal cards to offer a better employee experience.
In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of employee food cards and how companies can implement this program to enhance workplace culture.
Benefits of employee food card
- Employee food cards significantly improve employee satisfaction and loyalty by underlining the importance of healthy and convenient dining options.
- Employees can do away with the long hours they spend preparing their food for lunch, instead, they can get food of their choice with employee food cards.
- With meal cards, you can facilitate daily team lunches which will help in building bonding between team members and improve collaboration.
- Employee food cards offer employees a range of food options so that they can pick meals from a place of their preferences and dietary requirements.
- Employees can practice responsible budgeting with employee food cards allowing them to keep track of their spending.
Implementing employee food cards program in the workplace
Introducing an employee food card program within your organization can be beneficial in setting a positive tone at the workplace. However, it needs thorough planning and streamlined implementation to achieve desired results. Below, we discuss the process to launch an effective employee food card program.
Understand employee needs and preferences
Food is a very personal choice, and to ensure you have a successful employee food card program, you must have a thorough understanding of the needs and preferences of your employees. For this, you should plan a series of steps like surveys, discussions, and polls to learn their eating habits, dietary restrictions, and preferred food.
You must use this information to put together a list of appropriate meal options and restaurants. These insights will form your criteria metric to select employee food card providers that align with your employees’ diverse preferences.
Design a meal card program
Once you have your workforce preferences, you can now make a list of available meal card providers like Zaggle SAVE. You must also come up with a criterion to decide which provider offers a flexible and cost-effective meal card solution. Some of the factors that you can look at include the network of restaurants accepting the card, ease of use, security features, mobile access, customer support, and reporting capabilities.
Set the budget for meal allowance
While you are evaluating available employee food card providers, your finance team can come up with a budget that can be allocated to the meal card program. Usually, companies consider employee hierarchy, working hours, and other policies to determine which employee is allotted how much meal allowance. Regardless of which route you take, you must ensure that it is reasonable and follows a fair structure while keeping the fund availability in mind.
Communicate program details with employees
Like any other employee benefits program, the success of an employee food card program depends on how well your employees use it. For that, you must communicate the guidelines and benefits of using food cards. In addition to sending emails about the program, your finance team must hold interactive sessions to explain the details of the program. It is also crucial to communicate the meal allowance policy and restrictions to avoid compliance issues. Other important details to communicate include the network of affiliated restaurants, the card reloading process, and available discounts.
Be available to address common concerns
Being available to answer your employee queries and doubts is very important, especially if it is the first time you are launching an employee meal card program. It is natural for employees to have concerns regarding salary deductions, privacy and security, card acceptance, and so on. Your finance or HR team must be fully capable of addressing any issue or query that your employees come up with. It is a good idea to create documentation outlining guidelines and other necessary instructions for the employee food card program.
Zaggle SAVE: A Convenient & Powerful Employee Food Card Solution
Employee food card programs can become an administrative overhead if you choose to go the manual route. That’s why we recommend Zaggle SAVE, an all-in-one food card solution that allows employers to automate meal allowance benefits with a versatile prepaid card that is accepted at over 7 million outlets both online and offline. Zaggle SAVE is an ideal solution for your program because,
- Fully compliant with regulatory standards
- Powerful visual dashboard
- Access operations via the mobile app
- Generate transaction statements and reports
- Highly secure and protects against fraud
Learn more about Zaggle SAVE here.
