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Food And Work: Helping Your Team To Eat Healthier
Nutrition is a key part of health,
and employers can ensure a more productive workforce by making sure everyone is eating correctly.
If you want to keep your employees healthy, one of the main things you have to watch for is what they’re eating. The food we consume plays a major factor in how healthy we are, and even physically active people can end up gaining weight if they aren’t eating properly, which can lead to medical issues like diabetes and heart disease.
However, no employer can control what their workforce has for lunch. You can’t force your staff to eat plates full of fruit and vegetables if what they want is a burger and chips! However, there are a few things you can do to ensure your employees are as healthy as possible when it comes to their diet.
One example comes from web giant Google, which provides employees with a complimentary buffet in its New York office. All that free food might seem like a bad idea, but the company has a few tricks to ensure staff don’t pile on the pounds.
A lot of it is to do with perception. Google puts the salad bar at the front of the buffet so it is the first thing people see, while keeping sweets in opaque jars. In their vending machines, water and fruit juice is kept at eye level while sugary fizzy drinks are at the bottom, behind tinted glass. The effect of all this is that people are less tempted to eat unhealthy food, but they still have the option to if they want.
You can do this without the revenue of an industry titan like Google. Simply making sure you have healthy food in the office will go a long way towards achieving this goal. A weekly fruit box, for example, can help immensely. When your employees are hungry, the only visible food will be healthy, so they will snack on fruit.
Many workplaces have sweets or biscuits on hand, and just like Google all you have to do is put them in an opaque container to make them less tempting for all involved. These simple tips can go a long way towards making your workforce healthier.
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