Why Getting Rid of Free Office Snacks Doesn't Come Cheap
A small perk that can be trouble to take away.
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To boost its bottom line, Sprint decided last week to end the era of free office snacks for its employees. The move represents a tiny fraction of the struggling telecom's effort to cut $2.5 billion from its total operating expenses. Axing the free food will shave $600,000 from the budget. But at what cost?
"They would never have given the snacks to begin with if they didn’t think it was helping boost productivity somehow," said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, the job-review website.