Employee Health Promotion

Often individuals avoid low fat foods because they think these foods do not taste great. To help inform employees, purchase a variety of low fat foods and put them out in a conference room for an hour or so for a drop-in tasting session. Or, arrange for low-fat potlucks encouraging employees to bring and share their favorite low fat or healthy dishes. Considerations:

• Make sure the selections actually taste great.
• Provide a “fact sheet” with the names and price of the various products to assist participants if they want to purchase these products from the grocery store.
• Provide other written information on great diet for any interested participants to take. Make use of websites and other resources specified in the Resource Section at the end of this guide.
• Provide small tasting spoons or wooden ice cream tasters.
• It doesn’t require much of each item to give participants a taste of the meals or dish. It is not crucial to buy enough, or bring enough, food to offer a meal.
• Plan the tasting room after lunch so participants can go in on their own and sample.
• Watch for overly sugary items…sometimes low fat means elevated sugar – so be sure to look at the label.
• Examples of purchases for a worksite sampling might include: two boxes of low fat crackers, a package of low fat cheese, a box of low fat cookies, two or three low fat spreads such as hummus, low fat cream cheese, a package of honey nut or other flavored rice crackers, and one or two other low fat items.
• Position signs on the table politely reminding participants that the idea is to sample, not have a meal.
• Provide a beverage such as a new kind of fruit juice or herbal tea.

Group backing and encouragement can be very beneficial in supporting employees make healthy changes. Create situations, peer groups, or information avenues where the expertise and experiences of coworkers can be shared with others. Some ideas for providing worksite backing for healthy changes include:

• Workers can be asked to voluntarily submit ideas, advice, and strategies related to particular healthy practices they have successfully implemented in their lives. For example, ex-smokers can be asked to submit ideas about what worked for them when they quit; then those ideas can be shared in newsletters, handouts, classes, etc.
• Topics like weight management, stress management, managing change, increasing exercise, etc. lend themselves to this development of collective wisdom sharing.
• Behavior change backing groups, created based on employee interest in making healthy change, can meet on regularly to share ideas, resources, support, etc. Employee Health Promotion Programs can offer some assistance and facilitation in getting a group started. The group then itself takes charge of keeping the group going. Periodically the wellness program can offer to bring in a speaker on a topic relevant to the group. Be sure to help the group agree upon ground rules that everyone agrees to before the group is left on its own.