Food and Beverage
Research has shown that increasing employees' access to healthier foods and beverages at the worksite can create a healthier workforce, increase productivity, and decrease healthcare costs.
Below are tools to help your worksite develop a comprehensive wellness initiative to address food and beverage at your worksite.
- First, take the Food and Beverage Assessment to determine the strengths your worksite can build upon and any areas that require attention.
- Then, utilize the tools to develop and implement a comprehensive, multi-strategy (information, program, benefit design, policy and environment) worksite wellness initiative.
Assessement takes about 10 minutes to complete. Results will be emailed to you upon complettion.
Take Action Using Our Tools
This is a small sampling of the interventions that WorkWell KS recommends to help guide worksites in developing comprehensive, multi-strategy worksite wellness initiatives.
It is a best practice to have a goal for each of your wellness efforts. In the worksheet below, we provided some sample goals for food and beverage intervention. Use the worksheet to develop your own goal for this topic.
Utilize your Food and Beverage Assessment Report to identify at least one intervention for each strategy (information, program, benefit design, policy and environment).
Policy
Policies are integral components of the worksite. They codify what behaviors are considered appropriate, they have lasting effects, and policies are enforced at an institutional level. Ensure your policy has the following components: purpose/intent of the policy, effective date, where employees can access the policy, enforcement plan, and consequences for non-compliance.
Sample Food and Beverage Policy (PDF)
Environment
Environmental changes surpass all of the other changes because we tend to adapt to our environments. Changing the physical space can be an essential strategy for a wellness initiative and can sustain behavior changes, as employees do not need to self-select into a program. These effects can be especially impactful when combined with policies.
Food and Beverage Environmental Strategies (PDF)
Benefit Design
Benefits are driven by Human Resources and include strategies such as paid time off and health insurance plans. Designing benefits requires a substantial commitment and a thorough wellness initiative, and the payoffs can substantially influence health care claims. Implementing benefit design strategies (instead of providing low-level incentives like a t-shirt or water bottle) will have greater impacts on long-term behavior change.
Food and Beverage Environmental Strategies (PDF)
Programs
Program is the second most basic strategy. When used as a stand-alone strategy, programs can promote behavioral change, but this is generally temporary. When implemented along with the other strategies, sustained behavior change is more likely to occur.
fruit and vegetable program (PDF)
Information
Providing information is the most basic approach to health promotion. It can increase knowledge, but knowledge is not strongly linked to behavior change. However, when implemented along with the other strategies, behavior change is more likely to occur. When providing information, remember to utilize at least four channels (e.g., emails, newsletters, bulletin boards, social media, intranet) and key communication messengers (i.e., who/what do people listen to/read emails from).
After developing your goal and identifying at least one intervention for each strategy, utilize the faction map to identify and engage factions to gain buy-in before implementing your strategies.
For more information about engaging different factions watch the Foundation: Faction Mapping video.
Sample Faction Map
Review these examples from other worksites to help you get started with faction mapping.
Fillable Faction Map
Use this fillable PDF worksheet to identify, engage, and work across different factions.
Once you have implemented all of the identified strategies, retake the Food and Beverage assessment and compare to your baseline assessment report. Now that you have a comprehensive, multi-strategy (information, program, benefit design, policy and environment) initiative in place, we recommend your worksite sustain this work as you move to another topic.