Promoting Good Nutrition and Healthy Eating in the Workplace
By Natasha Malesevich, MHA
By promoting good nutrition and healthy eating, employers can take a proactive approach to creating a healthier work environment. Food has a direct impact on performance and productivity. Good nutrition is crucial to promoting the overall health and success of any workforce. Employees who eat well feel better, have increased and consistent energy levels, improved dispositions and decreased levels of stress. They are more likely to be engaged and productive in their day-to-day work.
Employers of any size or industry can integrate low cost — or even free — steps to encourage good nutrition and healthy weight management. Their efforts can help employees become healthier and actually reduce their medical expenses.
Any group of diverse people will have different needs and preferences. The same is true of your employee population. When introducing healthy eating options, ensure that your organization’s initiatives are aligned with your employees’ work schedules, interests and goals. Are they interested in losing weight, improving their overall health or managing a health condition such as diabetes? Surveying your workforce can provide important background information. The results can be a basic blueprint to develop effective strategies tailored to your own employees’ needs and preferences.
Introduce healthy eating options
It’s easy for anyone to overeat and make less-than-healthy food choices on a regular basis. This is especially true when someone is hungry between long stretches of not eating or short on time. Specifically, when eating meals at work during limited breaks or rushing through the drive-through window at a fast-food place at the end of a long day. Limited time (or no break time) and lack of availability of healthy food is often problematic. Employers can encourage healthy workplace eating by incorporating low-cost ideas such as:
• Offer easy access to healthy snacks during the day. Stock vending machine with healthier snacks such as nuts, pretzels and popcorn, instead of candy and chips.
• Replace soft drinks with water, seltzer and flavored no-calorie beverages.
• Encourage proper hydration throughout the day. Provide fresh, convenient drinking water. Reusable water bottles are a great employee gift to encourage healthy hydration.
• Provide healthier food options in the company cafeteria, including fresh fruit, vegetables, soup, lean meat and whole grains. Limit or eliminate fried food options.
• Offer healthy foods at company meetings such as yogurt parfaits, salad bars and lean protein sandwiches.
• Provide a refrigerator and microwave in break rooms, so employees can reheat homemade food on their meal break.
• Post nutritional information and healthy recipes in the break room or distribute information through internal employee newsletters.
• Share information about easy-to-use food tracking Apps (some are free):
• My Fitness Pal
• Fooducate
• FatSecret
• LOSE IT!
• Diet Doctor
• Carb Manager
Invest in a Wellness Committee
Do you have an active wellness committee that can help spread the word about healthy eating in your workplace? If not, consider forming one. Engage your hourly employees to volunteer for this committee and to become wellness champions in their own areas. Wellness Champions can help promote healthier eating among their peers. You could incentivize committee participation by offering an extended paid lunch break once a month, when wellness committee participants meet to plan activities.
As the health and wellness sponsor of this publication, Advocate Aurora Health supports good nutrition as a key driver of good health. Since most employees consume at least one meal or snack (and several beverages) each day while at work, it’s important to encourage healthy workplace eating.
The ROI of promoting good nutrition
Research repeatedly confirms that eating well and controlling weight reduces the risk of certain cancers, obesity, heart disease and other costly illnesses. Keeping your employees healthy can pay dividends in the form of reduced absenteeism, higher productivity and reduced health care costs. That’s a proven return on investment that any employer should be willing to make.
Natasha Malesevich, MHA, promotes healthy eating and wellness at Advocate Aurora Health as a senior project coordinator, Strategic Operations
If you would like to learn more, Advocate Aurora Employer Solutions can help your organization create a successful workplace wellness program. Visit employersolutions.aah.org/learn-more to schedule a consultation.
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