Healthy Snacking in the Workplace

Offering healthy snack food alternatives is an easy start to showing your commitment to workplace wellness. Keep records to see that they are actually being used. Make sure the supply is fresh, clean, and attractively presented. If necessary, charge a fair price, but remember that the continued wellness of your employees impacts morale and your bottom line.

Here are some helpful tips and things to keep in mind:

• Read the label!  If you can’t pronounce the names of the ingredients inside, chances are it contains chemicals and additives and its best not to eat it.
• Choose snacks that are nutritious and unsweetened.   Sugar lowers immune system function for several hours after being eaten.
• Keep pure water dispensers in convenient locations around the office (preferably in 5 gallon dispensers rather than individual bottles – more cost effective and environmentally sound).
• Drink at least 8-10 glasses of purified water a day.  This often stops us from snacking out of boredom too.
• Make available a blender or juice extractor on-site which encourages healthy smoothies and fruit drinks to be made and cuts down on the urge to run out and grab something unhealthy, as does a fridge and a water cooler.

“Just seven diet-related health conditions cost the United States $80 billion annually in medical costs and productivity losses.”

--ECONOMIC RESEARCH SERVICE

Employers are becoming more aware that overweight and obesity, lack of physical activity, and tobacco use are adversely affecting the health and productivity of their employees and ultimately, the business’s bottom line.  For many companies, medical costs can consume half of corporate profits or more.  It is common now for employers to utilize cost sharing, cost shifting, managed care plans, risk rating, and cash-based rebates or incentives.  However, these methods only shift costs.  Workplace wellness promotion stands out as the long-term answer for keeping employees healthy and at less risk of disease.

Benefits of a Workplace Wellness Program

For the Employer:

For over a decade, research has been showing the effectiveness of Wellness Programs.  For every dollar spent on a Wellness Program, the returns have been cost savings of between $2.30 and $10.10 in the areas of decreased absenteeism, fewer sick days, reduced WSIB claims, lowered health and insurance costs, and improvements to employee performance productivity.

A workplace wellness program can have many benefits for both employers and workers.  The most important benefit is healthier, happier lives for workers who in turn achieve greater results and are more productive on many levels.  This is something that improves our community and society as a whole as they benefit from this also.  Healthy employees experience increased job satisfaction, fewer absences and increased productivity, all of which affects your bottom line.

By providing wellness programs employers can help employees to understand their current health status and how to reduce health risks.  Workplace wellness programs provide access, opportunity and the encouragement workers need to actively participate in improving their own health.

Companies in various industries nationwide report saving millions of dollars due to corporate wellness programs and for well over a decade, research has been showing the consistent effectiveness and tangible benefits of workplace Wellness Programs.

 "A healthy employee is a productive employee."

Today, more than 81 percent of American businesses with 50 or more employees have some form of health promotion program – the most popular being exercise, smoking cessation classes, stress management, and healthy eating and nutrition programs.  Most employers offer wellness programs simply because they think the benefit is worth the cost.

Helping employees trim down can actually expand a company’s productivity and cut down on medical costs.  Policies and programs aimed at giving employees more opportunities to be physically active and eat well in the workplace can enhance a company’s bottom line by improving productivity, recruitment and retention, and by boosting worksite morale.

Health promotion is an investment in human capital.  Employees are more likely to be on the job and performing well when they are in optimal physical and psychological health.  They are also more likely to be attracted to, remain with, and value a company that obviously values them.