Health awareness and corporate wellness are what is the need of the hour. The fitter the employees the healthier the business would be. The employers now keep corporate wellness programs in check for their employees’ health benefits. Onsite fitness center, a gym, group classes and healthy food are few of the things which can keep a good check on the employees’ health.
Here are main outlined reasons why employees are “what they eat”, and why an on-site nutrition programming should be the top priority for employers in evaluating wellness solutions.
- Rising medical cost: Lowering the risk factors for diabetes, obesity and heart diseases etc requires more than just fitness programming. The employers must provide integrated, dynamic and engaging nutrition, education and support so that employees think differently about how they eat each day. The medical cost is what employees cannot afford and thus employers should try and do whatever possible to make the employees healthy from within.
- Incorporating and informing good eating habits: Employees should be taught about nutrition and healthy eating habits and their benefits. People generally don’t know what is good and easy to eat and fall prey to the bad eating habits easily. Introducing program like group classes for cooking healthy, nutritionist visit to office etc can help them know what is good and healthy.
- Nutrition for the complete family: Making employees follow healthy habits and follow the same at home should be the plan. Often poor nutrition habits are fostered at home, leading to higher claims for the entire family. So the healthy should be incorporated in entire family slowly by finding ways to meaningfully engage with employees around nutrition. This can have a positive impact at home as well.
Mentioned this now let us focus on How to Encourage Healthy Eating in Your Employees?
Now how do you address something like a healthy diet? Here are some good ideas that can help you encourage healthy eating without being too pushy for employees.
- Offer Company Cooking Lessons – Arrange for classes for healthy cooking of some recipes. This will make them interested as well as informed about good food.
- Start a Worksite garden- Become organic is what the time needs. Many companies have a little green space managed by employees build up now. This will help employees to start their week one step closer to a fresh and healthy grocery list.
- Have weekly healthy potlucks – The employees are encouraged to bring healthy foods like salads, chicken and fruit dishes etc. It’s a great way for employees to be creative about how they can do healthy.
- Bring in a Nutritionist- Create a wellness center in office and bring in a nutritionist visitor/ or partner with a nutritionist for helping the employees with a good eating schedule.
- Educate- Educate employees about good and bad fats, good and bad food intakes, their health benefits and ill effects too.
- Arrange for a good meal plan – A Low meal lunch pack can be arranged for employees as a substitute for normal catered food. This will make them go into a habit of having good low cal meal daily and try and cook the same later too. Now many hotels do catering service for meals which are healthy and nutrition filled. One option to find a Low-Calorie Meal plan for working professionals is to order it with Evoma Hotels in Bangalore (https://evoma.com/business-centre/low-calorie-meal-recipes-for-lean-startups/)
No matter what option you use to start the conversation about a healthy diet at the office space. It can be a sensitive subject for few and a difficult to change one for others too. Start trying and results will follow soon. Encouraging a healthy diet and a healthy living is an excellent way to promote employee wellness in your company.
Author Biography
Hi, I am Shweta from Bangalore. I am a working mom in a field of Digital Marketing and a socially active person with a flare of writing. I love following blogs and write about fitness, beauty, travel, and kids. Just ping me on @swetsmile or find me on https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathurshweta/
Keep reading and ill keep blogging
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