Top 6 Benefits Of Corporate Nutrition Programs

Exercise is king; nutrition is queen. Put them together and you've got a kingdom. – Jack LaLanne

Living in a fast-paced world where everyone is sprinting to make it big in life, we often ignore what we eat. But eating right is a necessity to maintain good health. Yet again, being a busy professional, it becomes difficult to keep track of nutrition.

Many a time, even I have rushed to my workplace for my morning scrum on an empty stomach. This may be the case for most busy employees.

A study conducted in a particular organization reported that about 45.8% of employees skipped breakfast and had lower dietary quality. However, researchers emphasize doing more studies about why employees skip meals and how employers can improve nutrition at work.

This indicates that employers take proactive steps to improve the dietary habits of employees at work. Employers should encourage employees to eat healthily. Incorporating initiatives like corporate wellness nutrition programs or corporate nutrition workshops can come in handy.

In fact, in current times, the popularity of employee wellness programs is growing rapidly. Employers are seeking ways to promote employee wellness, and employees are considering workplaces that promote wellness.

Given this, many organizations are integrating wellness platforms that focus on nutrition. After all, a healthy workforce is the key to a thriving business. Are you also considering employee nutrition programs to promote workplace wellness?

In this blog, I will be covering how corporate nutrition programs are crucial in promoting overall wellbeing.

What are corporate nutrition programs?

A corporate nutrition program is a wellness initiative that helps instill healthy eating habits among employees of an organization. Implementation of such a program involves employees getting access to:

• Healthy food options via vending machines or cafeteria at work
• Educational resources related to nutritional values
• Nutrition tracking feature and, counselling sessions

Corporate nutrition programs aim to foster healthy eating habits and bring awareness to busy employees about nutrition. It is a crucial initiative as employees today often choose meeting work deadlines over food. They remain ignorant of the repercussions of skipping meals in the long run.

This is why employers should integrate employee wellness platforms or programs that prioritize nutrition.

What are the Benefits of Corporate Nutrition Programs?

Making changes to one's eating habits is not an easy journey. I, and maybe even you, may have seen many people struggle to switch to a healthier diet. In such cases, corporate nutrition programs can be helpful.

If curated rightly, such a program can make impressive changes in the participants' dietary habits.

For example, here is a recent success story of how Vantage Fit helped an employee take up a calorie deficit diet religiously.

1. Better company culture

The introduction of nutrition programs signifies the management's dedication to employee wellness. In turn, it creates a positive image of the organization for promoting positivity, which is lacking in most corporates nowadays.

2. Better turnover rate

In today's time, most employees prefer organizations that take a keen interest in employee health. Some percent of employees have reported staying in companies that offer wellness perks and benefits.

3. Better knowledge of food intake

Employee wellness platforms with nutrition components offer nutrition trackers. This helps employees get an insight into how many calories, protein, carbs, or fats they are consuming per meal. This instills an awareness of what employees consume as they hustle at work.

4. Better Health

This is an obvious but noteworthy benefit of implementing a nutrition program. Successful integration will help employees understand the importance of healthy eating.

Also, they will learn about healthy food options to munch on while meeting deadlines. Ultimately, this will contribute towards healthier eating behavior and better overall health.

5. Better productivity

There is a saying, that happier employees equal a happier and more successful organization. Employees who understand the art of eating right will feel content and happy. The result will be more productive employees delivering work on time and taking fewer sick leave.

6. Less healthcare costs:

With employees eating right and healthy, the chances of chronic illnesses like heart disease or diabetes will be minimized. This directly helps reduce the burden of healthcare costs on the organization.

Key Aspects of Corporate Wellness Nutrition Programs

The standard corporate wellness nutrition program comprises the following key aspects:

1. Health assessments

Corporate wellness nutrition programs offer timely health assessments. This is an important aspect of understanding the participants' health status. Doing so helps the admin create an ideal wellness program accordingly.

2. Availability of healthy food options:

As part of corporate nutrition programs, employees can access healthy food options in the workplace. Implementing such a program, the management offers nutritious meals in the cafeteria instead of the usual office food like fast food.

3. Awareness about nutrition and career:

Nutrition programs include the distribution of resources about why eating healthy is essential for employees' professional growth. Management can also arrange workshops, or seminars to shed light on what and what not to eat while at work and the downside of not eating healthily.

4. Access to nutritionist:

When it comes to food, especially when hungry, we eat whatever is available or we crave. The problem with this behavior is, sometimes we end up eating food with low or no nutritional value. While we satiate our taste buds and stomach with such food, the body gets no dietary benefit.

This is why consultation or counseling with a nutritionist plays a vital role. Professionals know how to guide and share dietary tips that will come in handy for employees. Moreover, employees with health issues will get nutrition tips in the office.

5. Stress management sessions:

Did you know, about 33 percent of adults in the United States have reported to overeat due to stress! On the other hand, some stressed out people tend to lose appetite due to stress. After all, everyone's way of dealing with stress is different. And in stressful times, people rarely incline towards a healthier lifestyle.

So, counseling with a stress management specialist will help stressed out employees see the end of tunnel.

6. Weekly and monthly wellness challenges

Most employee wellness programs offer virtual wellness challenges to improve dietary habits of participants. Based on the participants' current lifestyle choices and health status, such programs offer customized challenges that will improve their food intake.

Nutrition oriented wellness challenges include tasks like tracking food intake, daily water intake, etc.

Some nutrition wellness challenge ideas to try:

• Say no to sugar challenge
• Drink it up, water challenge
• Eat green veggies everyday challenge
• Wholesome food challenge
• Portion control challenge

How to create corporate nutrition programs?

1. Identify employee needs and company culture:

The primary key to creating successful corporate nutrition programs is to study the employees' food habits, lifestyle choices, and health status. For this, employers can run online surveys within the organization.

2. Set the goal and purpose of the program:

After assessing the health status and requirements of your employees, the next step to follow is setting the purpose and goal of the program. Discuss pointers like what led to the decision of implementing such a program, and what outcome do you wish to see after the program's initiation.

Set measurable parameters like employee productivity, mood, sick leave pattern, performance to calculate the results. Carry out an organization wide assessment based on these parameters and record the values.

After the program's implementation, assess once again to check any change in the values to learn the effectiveness of the program.

3. Enlist board members for the program

Create an in-office council consisting of employees from each department who will oversee the program's functioning. Decide on a budget for a seamless allocation to run the program.

Allocate budgets for all the components needed for this, like wellness coach, healthy food options to offer in the office, and resources to circulate.

4. Partner with wellness experts

Do a thorough research of experts who provide wellness solutions linked to nutrition. Join hands with them to tackle the employees' issues like stress management, mood disorders, chronic health issues and so on.

5. Introduce a recognition and reward system

Recognition and rewards play a major role in the success of any initiative. For every employee who hits the targets in the wellness challenges, they should . For instance, in Vantage Fit's weekly wellness challenge, here is how the admins set incentives as per the tasks.

6. Partner with a wellness platform

Wellness platforms offer customized services to run wellness challenges, integrate activity tracking features, and more. Such platforms also offer incentivization programs to increase participation rate, and sense of ownership.

How can companies measure the effectiveness of their corporate nutrition program?

Measuring the effectiveness of wellness initiatives like a nutrition program may take some time. Factors like company size, demographics, program goals, and key metrics play a role in determining the time frame for measuring the program's efficiency.

Generally, it takes at least 3-6 months to understand how the program has affected the participants. However, running the program for 6 months to 12 months will help gather better insights. Now let's look into how you can measure the effectiveness of a nutrition program.

1. Increased engagement and participation rate

This is a basic indicator of how a wellness program is performing. Higher the engagement and participation rate, the higher are the chances of the program's success.

2. Better health status

The motive behind implementing a nutrition program is to promote better employee health. Running a health assessment after 3 or 6 months of the program's launch and getting positive health reports is another way to learn its effectiveness.

3. Increased ROIs

The ROI numbers are the biggest indicators of all to check the effectiveness of a wellness program. These figures directly indicate the employees' efforts and performance towards achieving the company goals.

Top 5 wellness platforms offering corporate nutrition programs

1. Vantage Fit

It is an AI-powered wellness platform packed with multiple features, including a nutrition tracker. Serving corporate organizations across the globe, Vantage Fit has been helping employees embrace a holistic lifestyle.

2. Wellness Concepts, Inc.

It is a platform that considers nutrition a catalyst for managing and preventing disease. Wellness concepts offers a comprehensive dietary assessment, a nutrition tracking platform, and much more.

3. Personify Health

Personify Health is the brainchild of Virgin Pulse and HealthComp. It takes pride in offering uniquely tailored wellness solutions to every organization's employee.

From health and wellbeing content topic areas to habit tracking features, they offer the essentials required to take up a healthier lifestyle.

4. WellRight

This is another up-and-coming nutrition platform offering one-on-one counseling with licensed dietitians and wellness coaches. What's more unique about Smoking killsWellRight is that it welcomes participants' families on the wellness journey too.

5. Navigate Wellbeing Solutions

Lastly, Navigate Wellbeing Solutions is worthy of mention. The platform aims to foster healthy habits through education, motivation, and supportive elements. It offers a diverse healthy recipe database, nutritional challenges and a lot more.

Final Words

It's the truth when the leaders say the growth of an organization lies in the hands of the employees. So, in the world of wellness, healthier and well-fed (pun intended) employees will lead an organization to its zenith.

So, are you ready to take your business to the next level? Vantage Fit holds the ultimate key to unlocking a healthier and more productive workforce. Talk to our experts and discover how you can revolutionize your employees' wellness game with this platform.