An employee checks their bank balance before lunch and decides to skip it. A parent at work calculates how many meals are left before payday and hopes the groceries stretch. These are not scenes from the distant margins of the economy. They are increasingly common experiences among people who are employed. When we talk about workplace performance, we tend to focus on skills, motivation, and leadership. We debate engagement strategies and design incentive systems. We rarely ask a simpler question: Are employees reliably able to eat?
Food insecurity affects millions of working adults. They show up to meetings, log into Zoom calls, operate machinery, serve customers, and manage teams while worrying about whether there will be enough food at home. My colleagues Jason Moy (University of Washington), Ussama Khan (London Business School), Wei Jee Ong (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), and I conducted a series of studies that are forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology. We examined how food insecurity relates to work outcomes. Across multiple samples of full-time employees, we found a consistent pattern: Employees who experienced food insecurity reported lower task performance and lower work engagement. This was not a…
