Support for Businesses and Organisations

The Benefits of Nutrition for Employers
The Business Case for Bringing Food and Health
into the Workplace

“I work long, hard days and have no problem sustaining my energy and concentration where I used to feel tired a lot of the time. Changing my eating patterns has had a high impact and created a virtuous cycle: I get high energy and better health from my food, which encourages me to eat well, which gives me even more energy to do my job well…”

Michelle Harvey-Jones,
(formerly) Head of HR and Corporate Services
Learning & Skills Council, Gloucester

Despite all the talk about work/life balance, the reality is that continuing pressure is a fact of life in most organisations, with consequent high demands being placed on workforces to meet the business objectives.

In this situation, the priority for managers is to keep their staff turning up for work, coping with the pressures and demands, and making a full contribution during all their working hours.

Unfortunately, the time when staff need to have the most focus and energy is also the time when they take least care of their own health and well-being, leaving them vulnerable to illness and the physical and mental effects of unmanaged stress : fatigue, insomnia, poor concentration, mood swings, digestive problems and infections – and even high blood pressure.

Yet sometimes quite modest changes to eating patterns and food choices can bring about major changes to how people feel, behave and perform at work.  As Michelle says: “I haven’t changed my working hours: I still work long days.  But changing my diet has enabled me to stay healthy, maintain my motivation and focus all day, and still have plenty of energy left to do all the things I want to do in the evening”.

By providing your employees with the self-help tools to manage their own energy and health, you can improve their performance, keep them at work, and be seen to support their own and their families’ health and wellbeing.

Seminars on food and health

Blackberry Nutrition delivers thought-provoking seminars on food and health for management teams and staff groups.  Always highly praised and greatly appreciated by attendees, the sessions are factual and educational, explaining the science of how our bodies work, the physical and mental effects of stress and why certain eating patterns and food choices can make such a difference to our working lives.

The sessions are popular because they tap into the population’s developing interest in food and health, and the growing realisation that nutrition has the capacity to restore our energy and solve many of the niggling health problems that reduce our quality of life, as well as protect our health for the future.

For example, many people have heard that they need high levels of anti-oxidants, and that they should avoid “bad fats” if they want to protect themselves against disease – but what are these exactly?  How do we get them or in the case of bad fats avoid them? My sessions give people the chance to hear and question an expert on food and health to the benefit of themselves, their employers and their friends and families.

	Individual benefits			Business benefits
	Improved energy and concentration			High on-the-job performance Enhanced creativity Full contribution
	Stable moods Good sleeping patterns Happier			More able to deal with pressure Better working relationships Team-building
	Fewer colds, flus and infections Stable, properly functioning digestion			Less time off work Fewer visits to the doctor! Happy/grateful for improved health
	Reduced executive stress Heart protection (cholesterol, blood pressure, palpitations) Weight management (for management teams in particular)			Payback on investment in health of key decision-makers Stop them keeling over! Build their resistance to ill-health and disease

Additional benefits

You can’t force your staff – or your colleagues! – to change their eating patterns, but you can invest in giving them the information and self-help tools  they need to keep them going, and in the process reap some or all of these additional benefits:

• Addressing minor but persistent health problems can reduce absence levels
• Providing stress management self-help tools can pre-empt stress claims
• Being seen to foster staff wellbeing can enhance staff retention
• Providing self-help tools can provide an extra dimension to existing stress management, employee wellbeing and/or work/life balance policies
• Follow-on personal consultations for individual staff can support occupational health procedures

The sessions also provide stimulating input and“something different” for team meeting and away-day agendas.