Team lunches have always been strong culture-building activities that help show employee appreciation and foster connection amongst staff. Today, many employees are working from home full-time or in a hybrid model, heading into the office only part-time. With staff spread out and spending limited time together in-person, it’s important to take actions that promote relationship building between team members. One step you can take is to host an employee appreciation virtual lunch! Here are a few tips on how to get started.
#1: Choose a cadence and tell your team
To truly show employee appreciation, your virtual lunch should be a regular occurrence. It could be once a month or once a week, and it could be company-wide or for your specific department or team. This is a good opportunity to ensure employees who don’t normally work together have a chance to connect, as well as welcome new hires. Since the lunch is virtual, it’s generally a good idea to structure the time with conversation prompts or team-building activities like trivia. Be sure to communicate the details to your team and send a calendar invite.
#2: Suggest local restaurants to order from
With so many restaurants available, deciding where to order from can be a challenge. Consider suggesting local restaurants for your employees to order from. You can even incorporate the choices everyone made as a part of the virtual lunch conversation so your team knows where to order from next time!
#3: Streamline the process by letting your team order themselves
When it comes to actually providing the meals for your lunch, a corporate ordering solution like Grubhub can help streamline the ordering process. Instead of having to collect addresses to send lunch to individual employees, you can provide your team with meal credits so they can order their favorite meal themselves. With a Grubhub Corporate Account, you can set up a line of credit that allows you to choose a budget and ordering window for the employees invited to your virtual lunch.
#4: Stretch your budget further by only paying for what’s ordered
Speaking of budget, with a Grubhub Corporate Account you’ll only pay for the meals that are actually ordered by your team. And if an employee wanted to order more than the budget, they’d simply pay the difference with a personal credit card. You’ll receive one invoice at the end of each month detailing exactly how much of your line of credit was spent and by whom.
#5: Measure the success of your virtual lunch and iterate
You can take advantage of the data on your monthly invoice to determine how impactful your virtual lunch was at showing employee appreciation. By knowing who ordered, you can see which teams and employees took advantage of the credit. Additionally, some teams might consider sending a post-event survey to help measure the success of the virtual lunch.
Grubhub Corporate Accounts—always here to help
Hosting an employee appreciation virtual lunch is easier when you have a corporate ordering platform. A Grubhub Corporate Account can help make your next virtual lunch simple, streamlined and cost-effective. It’s free to sign up and you’ll only pay for what’s actually ordered. And with over 300,000 restaurants available in all 50 states, we’re sure to have your employees’ favorite local restaurants and national chains available.
