culture·Published 2024-10
Free Office Snack Variety and Employee Ambient Anxiety Scores: An Unexpected Positive Relationship
Principal investigator: Orrin Bletchley, Founder & Director of the Institute.
Employees in offices offering a wider variety of free snacks report higher ambient anxiety on the Institute's Workplace Anxiety Scale.
Methodology
Seven hundred and thirty employees across 89 organizations completed the Institute's Workplace Anxiety Scale (WAS-14) and a supplementary questionnaire documenting the number of distinct snack varieties available in their office at the time of completion. Snack variety counts were independently verified by an Institute research associate for 71% of the sample; the remainder relied on self-report. The WAS-14 was administered without informing participants that snack availability was the variable of interest, which was considered ethically straightforward by the Institute's internal review process.
Funding disclosure: Funded by the Institute's Culture Measurement Research Fund. A snack brand whose product appeared in 34 of the 89 study organizations provided no funding and was not informed of this study.
Instruments cited in this study
Full citation
Bletchley, O. (2024). Free Office Snack Variety and Employee Ambient Anxiety Scores: An Unexpected Positive Relationship. Institute for the Study of Pointless Metrics. r = 0.80, p < 0.001, n = 730.