With employee health becoming more and more important as time goes on, a nutrition expert and author has advised companies to start to look at what workers are eating and drinking.
Jenny Tschiesche, aka The Lunchbox Doctor, said that organisations are missing a trick if they don’t look at what their people are eating and drinking.
Ms Tschiesche said:
What we eat has a huge impact on our performance at work, with concentration, energy, focus and productivity all being improved when you eat the right diet. I work with blue chip organisations to create workplaces where people thrive because they nourish their bodies and brains with great food.
A recent study found stigma around mental health struggles and burnout costs the UK economy £1.4 billion a year through unexplained sick days. It is also thought that 15.4 million working days were lost in 2017/18 due to stress, with the top five symptoms being fatigue, sleeplessness, aches and pains, anxiety, and weight gain. These are all issues affected by our diet, and I believe that if employers start to address food it could bring many rewards. Whether you want to boost productivity, reduce stress, increase employee engagement, see a fall in absences or bring down long-term sickness costs, I can help turn things around so you not only have happy workers, but hard working ones who stick around for longer.
Ms Tschiesche has worked with businesses to educate them and their teams about the foods that will help reduce stress, sleeplessness and maintain high performance amongst staff.
The same time frame saw alcohol perks, including happy hours and beer fridges, rising by 124.2 per cent, with perks related to games, which include ping pong tables, table tennis and pool tables, increasing by 90 per cent.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
No we shouldn’t don’t be ridiculous! They are team members not children. HR should concentrate on building teams and trust – not zombies