Why Invest In Healthy Eating As Your Office Culture?
Employee benefits are important to help recruit and retain employees, and reflect the employers’ brand. However, in today’s competitive market, offering a comprehensive group health plan is just the baseline. If you want to attract top talent and keep your teams motivated, what other cost-effective items should you include?
If we take a look at the top global companies, they all offer a healthy eating culture in some form. Why? Food is an essential fuel to the human body, and the more we nourish it with the good stuff, the better we can perform!
So it’s really a no-brainer to start promoting a healthy eating culture as a form of employee benefit. Not only is it easy and cheap to provide, it also mentally and physically encourages your employees to be their best selves at work in the long term.
But what are the benefits of a healthy eating culture at work?
Improves employees productivity
When your employees participate in a healthy eating culture, they are essentially strengthening their bodies with all the right nutrients and minerals to prevent sickness. As a result, it’s a lot easier to plan and commit to projects that depend on your employees showing up and giving it their all.
Cultivates team bonding
Besides providing everyone with a balanced diet at work, a healthy eating culture can also promote social bonding between employees, creating a common understanding that results in good working relationships. This can translate into meaningful collaborations and fruitful meetings that help unlock business opportunities for your company.
Boosts moods to encourage a peer support system
According to a study on How does Food Affect Mood at Work, the food we eat is believed to affect our moods positively or negatively, causing us to perceive our environments differently, and hence influencing us into exhibiting different behaviors.
Healthy eating at work can spark off a chain reaction by putting your employees in a good mood, helping them perceive others in a more positive light, and therefore likely to be of help when needed. Additionally, helping others sustains these positive emotions in the long term, and they're likely to keep looking for ways to be of help to their teams.
So how do I create a healthy eating culture among my employees?
It all starts from understanding what your employees value beyond work. We suggest starting simple with a quick survey, testing out a lunch program (protip: read ‘How Can We Avoid Poor and Accessive Eating During Social Gathering’), or investing in an employee health and wellness program to see how it might improve your employee’s morale.
Where can I get some external help?
At SgFitFam, we conduct a variety of nutrition talks to help your office make good food choices - reach out to us and receive a wellness proposal to discuss at work!