Wall Street Is Wooing Workers To Return To Work With Free Food

Corporate executives know that workers don’t want to return to the office. They recognize that a large percentage of their employees will resist returning five days a week and only go back full time kicking and screaming. Smart managers get that they’ll need to offer some incentives to entice them back—or at least make them feel a little bit better about returning.

A number of top Wall Street banks are offering free food as enticement. Eating out or ordering in a big city, like New York City, is very expensive. Having free or company-subsidized food could add up to about $5,200 a year. Don’t scoff, thinking that everyone’s a fat-cat banker or hedge fund multimillionaire. There are thousands of rank-and-file workers who earn a modest or reasonable living that’s largely reduced by commuting costs and ridiculously high taxes. 

New York City, which was both the epicenter of the financial world and hot spot for Covid-19, saw restaurants close down during the pandemic. This was due to either restrictions imposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio or the inability of food service operations to stay in business under the harsh circumstances. For the small group who came into the office at that time, the banks provided food for them.

Now that the Big Apple is open for business again, free or reduced breakfasts, lunches and dinner are becoming the new “perk” to make it “appealing” to be in the office, said  Dilip Rao, CEO of  Sharebite, a food-ordering app. “A lot of these firms are reopening their offices and they’re using food as the carrot to bring people back,” Rao, who serves a wide clientele (including financial institutions, major law firms and tech companies), said, “Oftentimes, when we talk to companies, they’re like, ’I don’t care if it’s $20 a day [in food subsidies], I just want people back in the office.’”

Offering free or subsidized meals is not a new thing. Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies have been doing this for a long time. One of the many goodies used to attract top talent is their well-known perks, such as free corporate catering. The search giant plans on altering the lush lunches, as it pivots to boxed, grab-and-go type meals, according to the New York Times.  

All sorts of companies are searching out new creative ways to offer amenities to their employees, in an effort to keep them happy and motivated, especially if they’re called upon to return to headquarters. It feels like there's a new post-pandemic perk culture emerging. The trend is focused on mental and emotional well-being and health concerns.   

Netflix, pre-pandemic, offered an unlimited vacation policy, which allows employees to decide for themselves when to work or take a break. CEO Reed Hastings said about this decision, “Today, in the information age, what matters is what you achieve, not how many hours you clock." Hastings added, "I have never paid attention to how many hours people are working. Time off provides mental bandwidth that allows you to think creatively and see your work in a different light. If you are working all the time, you don't have the perspective to see your problem with fresh eyes."

Investment banks, notorious for their long hours under stressful conditions, have shown signs of change. A rapid, unrelenting increase in trading activities, the launching of SPACS and other capital markets activities, kept bankers busy and produced outsized revenue gains and profits. 

The financial firms need to keep their people working and motivated to take advantage of the sweet spot they’re going through. Goldman Sachs was accused by a group of about 13 young bankers of being forced to work 100-hour workweeks under tough conditions. The adverse publicity spurred Goldman and other banks into a charm offensive. Another factor for Wall Street’s new niceness is that they need to cater to Gen-Z workers, who are in their early 20s, just entering the job market and desirous of a healthy work-life balance. 

In response, Goldman offered the bankers to take some time off, and that they’d get extra assistance. Jefferies Financial Group, a midsize investment bank, graciously offered its over 1,000 junior bankers a Peloton bike with a one-year subscription. 

Credit Suisse, the currently embattled global bank, gave securities analysts five-figure bonuses, which could pay for a nice beach house rental in the Hamptons to relax in over the summer. Apollo Global Management, a giant private equity firm, upped the ante by giving six-figure retention-type bonuses.   

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser informed her 210,000 employees that she is banning internal video calls on Fridays. The move is part of a larger program to set boundaries and help her people have a healthier work-life balance. Fraser also called for a new companywide holiday, called “Citi Reset Day.” It's considered a day of decompressing, as the year-long pandemic has taken a toll on the psyche of workers. 

In a memo, Fraser said, ″The blurring of lines between home and work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being.” The chief executive continued, “It’s simply not sustainable. Since a return to any kind of new normal is still a few months away for many of us, we need to reset some of our working practices.”  

Wall Street and the tech industry both did phenomenally well during the pandemic. Most Americans didn’t. The rich got richer and the middle class and low-wage earners saw their circumstances decline. Economists refer to this as the “K-shaped” recovery, where the 1% thrived, representing the upward swish, and everyone else slid straight down, like the lower end of the letter.

Here’s some free public relations advice to executive leadership: in a hot job market, companies need to take care of their workers. There’s also a growing demand by employees to work for companies that are empathetic and caring. Free food and expensive bikes are fine, but maybe the executives should consider offering meals to the people who haven’t benefited from the hot stock and real estate markets. 

Perhaps, they could offer ways to also help the still-struggling restaurant and food establishments too. This would go a long way by instilling pride in their employees for working at a magnanimous, caring organization.