Food insecurity is a workplace issue

How are you feeling today – anxious that your groceries might run out before you earn enough to buy more? Hungry because you skipped a meal so your kids could eat? That is the reality for 2.3 billion people around the world. The latest UN report estimates that 28% of the global population are food insecure.

Zero hunger is one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. At the extreme end of the scale, in desperate conflict zones such as Sudan, Somalia and Gaza, food insecurity is a shocking and visible phenomenon.

But even among wealthy nations, food insecurity is a major problem. Here in the UK, the cost of living crisis is taking a significant toll, and almost one in eight households is now affected, according to the Food Foundation. In the US, food insecurity affected some 47.4 million people – 13.5% of all US households – last year.

The UN states that governments and non-profit organisations cannot solve the crisis without more private sector involvement. Food insecurity rarely makes it onto the corporate agenda, however, says Ussama Khan, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at LBS.

“It seems like something that is outside of the workplace, not something leaders should care about. But what happens when these people go to work?” It’s also been a blind spot for social science researchers, who often focus on wealthy, well-educated white-collar employees.

Many people experiencing food insecurity work low-pay, low-status jobs, rather than office jobs: they are the delivery drivers, construction workers, store assistants. “We tend to ignore them, even though they are the ones who drive the essential services that all of us rely on,” says Ussama.

It doesn’t stop there, however. A survey of University of California employees, for example, found more than 70% of its clerical, administrative and support workers were affected. Scratch below the surface of any institution and you’ll also find undergraduate and postgraduate students who are living hand-to-mouth, surviving on loans or stipends that only cover the basics.

Ussama became interested in exploring what he calls a “silent epidemic that is getting worse” because of macroeconomic events like the wars in Iran and Ukraine. He wanted to look beyond public policy: “What are the psychological and behavioural effects of these shocks? Typically a lot of attention to these problems occurs at a very high level. In my research I’m trying to make the bridge between the societal level and the micro level.”

In his paper ‘The effects of food insecurity on work outcomes’, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Ussama and his co-authors Jason Moy, Wei Jee Ong and Christopher Barnes detail three research studies they carried out to show how food insecurity impacts adversely on people’s work. They also suggest meeting this need directly is an effective intervention that benefits not just the individuals concerned but their employers.

Food insecurity isn’t only about how immediate hunger or calories consumed; it also refers to the looming threat of possible scarcity. The anxiety this induces means that people have less mental capacity to focus on work tasks. Their executive functioning declines. When people are deprived of resources, their IQ literally drops. Their focus shifts toward meeting their immediate survival needs.

Ussama and his fellow researchers wanted to test their hypothesis that this diminished cognitive capacity arising out of anxiety most directly undermines three core workplace outcomes that rely heavily on cognitive and attentional bandwidth: task performance, work engagement (being “into” and emotionally connected with your work), and organisational citizenship behaviour (how helpful you are to colleagues, beyond the strict requirements of your role).

In their first study, 375 US working adults who said they had experienced food insecurity were asked to recall one such occasion and to write a few sentences about their feelings and behaviour at work on that day. To be eligible for the study, participants had to be employed, living in the US, and working at least 31 hours a week. The results suggested that food insecurity did indeed impact vital work outcomes negatively.

In a second study, the researchers collected weekly data from 567 participants who kept a diary for four weeks, with similar findings. So, across two very different study designs, Ussama and his colleagues found that both recalling instances of food insecurity and experiencing them on an ongoing daily basis made employees feel greater anxiety and be less effective at work.

Finally, to see if these negative results could be reversed by offering employees greater access to food, the researchers teamed up with the social enterprise Rizq in Pakistan for a field experiment testing the effect of a food intervention on people’s anxiety levels and work outcomes. Food inflation was 40% at the time, and insecurity was particularly high following devastating floods. “Pakistan is essentially an agrarian economy, and a third of the country was underwater,” Ussama recalls.

A total of 196 workers – factory workers, domestic cleaners, manual labourers, taxi drivers, and admin staff – were randomly assigned to receive either a package of food staples (cooking oil, lentils, rice, wheat flour, sugar, dates and loose tea) or a non-food package of equal monetary value (household essentials such as soap and toothpaste). The latter acted as the control in the experiment, to find out if it was receiving food that could reduce food insecurity compared to receiving other benefits. As expected, the participants who had been given the food packages reported they felt less anxious and worked more effectively than those who received non-food essentials.

In a further study, Addressing insomnia symptoms through food aid to those with food insecurity, published in the journal Sleep Health, Ussama and colleagues looked specifically at the impact of food insecurity on sleep. Again, it is notable that most articles relating to sleep in the western literature assume that people’s basic needs are covered.

Ussama’s intention was to draw attention to this neglected area and point out that it is in employers’ interests not to turn a blind eye. Lack of sleep can cause costly mistakes, accidents and worse. “Food aid provision may be an effective means to address insomnia in contexts in which traditional therapeutic approaches may be impractical to sufficiently scale,” the researchers concluded.

What organisations are doing

The researchers suggest that organisations consider the following:

1. Offer free or discounted food by negotiating discounts with local grocery stores through bulk purchasing. By passing on these cost savings to employees, organisations can help food-insecure employees access more food and improve their work outcomes at little cost to the organisation.

2. Collaborate with local food banks and establish accessible, on-site food pantries. Educate employees about accessing local welfare programmes and food banks. Set up a community garden at the workplace that allows employees to grow their own fruits and vegetables.

3. Provide free transportation for food-insecure employees to food banks. This is particularly important for people who don’t own a car and who work in offices that are located within or near “food deserts”, areas with no supermarkets or large grocery stores in the area.

In the UK, the Living Wage Foundation has an accreditation scheme for companies: Barclays, KPMG, Aviva and Ikea are just four of the 17,000 accredited Living Wage Employers in the UK that recognise the strong business case. Paying a real Living Wage helps employers to differentiate themselves in competitive markets, retain existing staff and attract new staff.

Some companies have set up payroll giving, enabling employees to make tax-free donations to global NGOs such as Action Against Hunger. Others have made tackling food insecurity one of their social impact pillars. Sodexo, for example, has supported millions of UK and Irish households through its Stop Hunger Foundation.

Red Letter Days Corporate, better known for its imaginative perks and away-days, offers food voucher solutions and urges companies to think beyond the usual employee wellbeing initiatives such as gym memberships and mental health support, excellent though those might be. “Food security is the foundation beneath all other wellbeing efforts,” as they state. “You can’t focus on resilience, mindfulness or productivity if you’re hungry.”