USAA offers its employees curbside meal service during COVID-19 pandemic

Dive Brief:

USAA is teaming up with Sodexo to offer a curbside meal service to nearly 35,000 employees across the country, the company announced March 31. With the food delivery service, employees can place daily weekday orders for same-day curbside pick-up of prepared meals and grocery food items, such as produce. The pre-made meals are offered at half-price, while the grocery items are sold at cost.
Melinda Castaneda, a director in USAA's bank contact center, voiced concern for coworkers unable to obtain essential food items during the COVID-19 pandemic and came up with an idea for a food support program, a USAA spokesperson told HR Dive in an email April 1. As a result, USAA and Sodexo are offering a new curbside meal service, in a time of social distancing, to support nearly 35,000 employees across the country.
The curbside pick-up service is available to USAA employees working remotely, and those who remain at the company's offices. However, USAA said nearly 100% of its workforce is working from home. After a pilot program at company headquarters in San Antonio, the service was expanded to regional campuses in Plano, Texas; Tampa, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and Colorado Springs, Colorado. USAA is also providing up to three weeks of emergency pay for COVID-19 related illness, childcare issues or situations where employees are unable to work from home, the company said in a statement.

Dive Insight:

Employee engagement and retention increase when employers show employees that they care, according to research — and the COVID-19 pandemic has put employers under the spotlight.

"The Science of Care," a Limeade Institute white paper published in October, defined "care" as providing what's necessary for someone's "health, welfare, maintenance and protection." Limeade said that 60% of workers surveyed who felt cared said they plan to stay three or more years with their companies, in comparison to only 7% of those who said they don't feel cared for.

"Care is about those day-to-day human interactions," Limeade's CPO and Chief Science Officer Laura Hamill said in a statement. "It's about being flexible and understanding when an employee needs to leave work early to pick up a sick child or fostering positive manager-employee interactions over a cup of coffee."

But sometimes employers may think they are doing a good job meeting the needs of employees when they're not. A report by Peppercomm and Echo Research released March 6 included a survey of 101 HR leaders, which determined a perception gap regarding how companies react to employee feedback. About 85% of HR leaders in the U.S. surveyed said their companies are effective at collecting employee feedback, and 75% said they're effective at acting on it. However, only 46% of U.S. employees said their organizations collect employee input well. And even fewer (37%) said their organizations are effective at taking action based on the input.