Empowering Health in the Workplace

Blog originally created for Farmhouse Delivery

Is creating a health-promoting work environment important to you?

Would it surprise you to know that over 50% of the adult population suffers from chronic health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, and overweight and obesity? Ever felt like you didn’t have the best workday? Well, conditions such as these often make the workday even more difficult, impacting quality of life and job performance. Amazingly, chronic diseases cause over 407 million missed days of work annually, which is an economic loss of over $260 billion! Most Americans spend the majority of their daytime hours at work, however many worksite environments contribute to the development of health conditions. The good news is that improving the environment of the workplace, and encouraging nourishing health behaviors, can help address chronic health conditions and have a lasting impact on the well-being of the workforce.

What can be done?

1. Develop an Organizational Strategy. The key to a lasting, health-promoting worksite environment is changing the company culture. This requires a commitment from leadership and managers. What’s the payoff? Well, worksites with leaders committed to encouraging healthy behaviors see the greatest overall influence on their employees. A model many researchers use to describe what it means to have a healthy work environment is known as the workplace Culture of Health. This model includes seven dimensions of workplace health including: policies; the physical environment; programs; leadership; supervisor support; coworker support; and values, moods, and norms. All these dimensions work together and influence whether a workplace embodies health. Implementing an organizational strategy such as this model, must be driven by company leadership and managers in order to have a lasting effect. Why implement such a model? Well, worksites that employ this approach see higher participation rates from their employees in their wellness programs and have more measurable behavior changes. So what does that mean for the organization? To name a few, employees working for worksites with a Culture of Health are three times as likely to take action regarding their health, and report higher levels of employee satisfaction and well-being. Even more exciting is that 95% of companies using the model report increased productivity from their employees. What a surprise, promoting health in the workplace means everyone wins!

2. Don’t forget the food. When creating a health-promoting environment, that helps make healthy choices easy, the foods available must be addressed. Did you know 25% of lunches alone are consumed in worksite cafeterias? That makes a big difference to a person’s weekly diet! But would it surprise you even more to know that most worksite food environments are obesity-facilitating? This means they offer up too many high fat, high sugar, energy-dense foods and not enough fruits, vegetables, and high fiber foods. Sounds easy enough to address, right? Well, improving the food environment at the worksite, while simple in concept, requires the need for a multi-factorial approach. This is because employees are exposed to food at the worksite in a number of ways including the cafeteria, vending machines, break rooms, and catering for work meetings and events. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start with where you can make the biggest immediate impact. That might mean making a policy about what types of foods can be ordered for meetings and events. Or it might mean stocking healthier foods in the break room. Or, you could speak with Farmhouse Delivery about their Employee Wellness Program healthy food options!

Wherever you choose to start, building a healthy workplace environment means creating a network of support for your employees to be happier, healthier, and more productive individuals. It’s an investment in their future that translates to a more profitable, committed workforce. That’s a future we all can celebrate!

References

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