Working employee wellness

According to The Big Picture, more than 75% of foodservice programs across all market segments have employee wellness programs in place in their companies or institutions. Such programs vary by organization and address anything from employees’ physical and mental health to stress management and workplace safety.

The most basic program, providing healthy foods and nutrition info, is offered by 65% of respondents to The Big Picture. The other most popular offerings include exercise/physical fitness programs (57%), workplace safety (54%), smoking cessation (49%) and stress management (43%).

Some institutions take employee wellness very seriously.

“It’s our goal by 2020 to be the healthiest college campus in America, and that refers to not only our students, but our staff as well,” says Brandon Crosby, area manager for dining services at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham. “And it encompasses the gamut—medical health, weight, healthy choices, mental health—recognizing there are a lot of things that contribute to a healthy campus.”

In conjunction with UNH’s insurance company, the university’s wellness program—called Healthy UNH—provides incentives to encourage staff to get physicals and set health goals. These include gift cards and even discounts on their insurance premiums.

As part of the campus-wide initiative, Dining Services has allied with a local grocer to label items with Guiding Stars, a three-tiered system indicating which menu items are healthy, healthier and healthiest. “We work very closely with Healthy UNH to share the changes we make,” Crosby says. “We’ve gone to all low-sodium bases to reduce sodium and we’re going to start a campaign in a couple of weeks in the dining halls to let [customers] know the everyday healthy items we have.”

But although three-quarters of respondents have wellness programs in place, relatively few measure them. Only 28% say they have figures to verify results. However, 50% of respondents say they believe their programs are working even though they can’t prove it.

For those programs that are formally tracked, success is measured through multiple means, such as weight reduction figures (77%), improved employee biometric lab results such as  cholesterol and blood pressure (55%), the reduction in the number of smokers (53%), reduced insurance rates (45%) and improved morale (40%). For those organizations not formally tracking their wellness programs, success is measured in other ways.

“More and more people are getting excited about [wellness], more people buy it,” says Cavin Sullivan, general manager with Metz Culinary Management at a corporate account in Ohio. “But I don’t have any concrete numbers to back that up. [It’s successful] based on what we see, what we hear, what we’re purchasing. It’s more of a knowledge thing that I’m really tracking.”

Sullivan says he focuses on choice and educates customers via nutritional information on signage throughout the café, as well as on the company’s intranet.

“We didn’t want to pull away a lot of the traditional things they were used to having, but we wanted to add alternative items that would be healthier choices,” he explains. And since it’s a subsidized account, prices for the healthier choices are reduced. “Our starches at the entrée station are more expensive than the vegetables, so it encourages people to get double vegetables so they’re eating healthier and not loading up on starch.”

Sometimes, tracking a program’s success is difficult because it has several parts. For example, when Todd Frisch, director of food and nutrition services at Genesis Health System, in Davenport, Iowa, became involved with the system’s wellness committee, a branded program called Well Power was already in place.

So Frisch set out to incorporate that program into the three cafeterias that he oversees, under the Dine Well brand.

Frisch and his team then established nutritional guidelines for entrées served on campus. "So on our hot entrées, we have [the Dine Well logo] and that’s promoting that this is a healthier choice."

Frisch says he aligns cafeteria promotions with Well Power initiatives whenever possible and continues to work with the system’s wellness team to “look at what’s going right and what we need to do for the next time, the next theme, and just getting everybody on the same page. It’s just really combining a lot of good.”

Changing for the better

Most operators said they have made at least one change to their menu offerings in the last two years to make foods healthier. The highest percentages of operators said they offered more fruits and vegetables (83%) and more whole-grain options (76%). 

Giving them the info

Sixty-nine percent of operators surveyed said they post nutrition information about the menu items they offer. Long-term care facilities (38%) were least likely to do so, while colleges and universities (88%) were most likely. Among operators who do post such material, where it can be found:

Who's healthiest?

Driven primarily by new USDA menu regulations, school foodservice operations have the highest percentage of healthy items on their menus, at 85%. On average, throughout the noncommercial industry, 56% of a foodservice facility’s menu comprises healthy foods. The average percentages, by segment:

Employee wellness programs

Seventy-five percent of respondents say they have an employee wellness program in place, with hospitals (91%) most likely to offer one and long-term care facilities (55%) least likely. What operators with wellness programs offer: