March is National Nutrition Month, making it a great time to either start or continue a conversation about healthy living with employees. Employee health and wellness programs continue to be popular to both motivate employees to make healthy choices and to lower the cost of healthcare for employers.
Nutrition is usually the most challenging piece of a healthy lifestyle. Exercise can be added into someone’s routine but changing eating patterns can be challenging and emotional. Here are some simple ways to promote both major pieces of a wellness program at your company.
Move More.
Getting employees to move more means creating a culture where it’s okay to get up from your desk and move around a little. Whether it’s a walk around the office, a run during lunch or leaving a few minutes early to catch a workout class. Whether you create opportunities to exercise within the company (a lunch walking group) or encouraging employees to get out of the office to move, get employees up from their desks and moving.
Building community around exercise is a great way to kick-off a wellness program can be really effective. Adding small rewards, like gift cards, into that mix can provide employees with the extra push of motivation to get them to the gym (or outside).
Eat healthy.
Healthy eating is tough. It’s not always fun, it doesn’t always taste as good as not eating not-healthy. In an office environment stress can often bring on unhealthy habits like stress-eating. Combat this type of behavior by providing or subsidizing healthy snacks in the office. Encourage employees to bring lunch, which not only leads to less calorie consumption but can help with employees’ financial health as well.
Another way to promote healthy eating among employees is to discount or reward employees (presumably for healthy actions) with access to healthy eating. Making it easy with healthy meal kits like Home Chef. This makes healthy eating easy and makes nutrition fun with all kinds of creative recipes and built-in portion control. Using healthy rewards further strengthens a wellness program.
March being National Nutrition Month is a great way to launch or reinvigorate an employee wellness program. Promoting healthy eating and exercise within your employee population is a win-win for both employees and employers.
