Healthy Eating Signage

Promote healthy eating and nutrition at your small business by posting motivational signs about nutrition, and healthy eating in the cafeteria or break area. Motivational signs can act as both a reminder and decision prompt when posted in any common area like the cafeteria or break area.

Encouraging healthful eating near the point-of-purchase of foods can influence decisions. Signage posted in various locations presents reminders for on and off -site eating habits.

Small Biz Action Steps

• Motivational signs can be posted in a variety of places.  Unconventional locations usually have more impact.  Examples are trash cans, walls, ceilings, vending machines, and restroom doors.
• Don‘t limit your signage to the cafeteria. Post signs in other places such as break rooms, hallways, elevators, restrooms, etc.
• Posters are not the only possibility. Try making table tents, window signs, flyers, or hanging displays. Laminating the information helps to keep it in good shape longer. Depending on the size/type, framing or mounting on foam core also lengthens the life of the sign and adds to the professionalism of the message.

Get Started Today!

You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.

Healthy Eating Options

Promote healthy eating options at your small business by offering appealing, low-cost, healthful food options, such as fruits and vegetables, juices, and low-fat dairy products in vending machines, snack bars, break rooms, and/or cafeterias. Offering appealing, low-cost, healthful food options at the worksite is one way to promote healthful eating to employees. Vending machines are a quick and convenient way for employees to purchase these types of food. If cafeterias or snack bars are not available, vending machines may be the only option for employees to purchase foods and beverages.

Small Biz Action Steps

• Step 1: Identify employee representative (s) to assess the need and interest in changing vending machine offerings.

• Step 2: Conduct a vending machine inventory asking employees to determine their interest in having healthful foods available in machines.  Identify preferences for vending machine items such as fruits, vegetables, milk, water, energy bars, pretzels, etc.

• Step 3: Identify worksite staff that deal with vending companies. Identify the date of the vending machine contract renewal and schedule your plans toinitiate changes with vending machine companies several months in advance of this renewal date.

• Step 4: Meet with a vendor representative to:
  - Explain the 5 A Day campaign (i.e. focus on environmental changes work to facilitate dietary change); share the program guidelines.
  - Share the results of the survey that support employees. desire for healthful food options with the vendor.
  - Provide the vending company with suggestions for healthful food choices and determine which are appropriate to include.
  - Seek permission from the vendor to label fruit and vegetable products with nutrition information on the vending machine.
  - Explore opportunities for reducing the cost of healthful food options.

Get Started Today!

You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.

Healthy Eating Incentives

Promote healthy eating and nutrition at your small business by providing incentives for participation in nutrition or weight management programs.

Most wellness programs are designed to change a health behavior such as increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables or losing weight.  Health behavior is difficult to change, and therefore, wellness program coordinators must recognize that people often need external motivators and reasons to change.  Incentives generate interest in the wellness program, offer rewards for changed behavior, and promote the company‘s belief in and commitment to wellness.

Incentives are useful and effective because of their direct impact on the universal human need for personal recognition and reward. An incentive may be defined as an anticipated positive or desirable reward that influences individual or group performance.

By reinforcing behaviors and rewarding results, successful program outcomes can be achieved. Among other things, incentives can be expected to: 1) increase program participation and completion rates, 2) provide a purpose for participants to make health behavior changes,
and 3) improve long-term adherence to a behavior.

Small Biz Action Steps

In order for an incentive to be effective, the participant needs to find it desirable and worth the effort.  Finding out what incentives motivate your participants can be accomplished in many ways including preference surveys, focus groups, structured interviews, pilot testing different incentives with small groups, or just randomly asking key people what they think.

Experts recommend that the incentives be kept small while achieving program goals.   Small but effective incentives are always more cost-effective.  Smaller external incentives are more likely to help individuals internalize their new behaviors and maintain them over the long term without ongoing external rewards. The bottom line is that participation rates will increase if an incentive is offered.

Types of Incentives can be Categorized as Follows:

• Achievement awards. Verbal praise and a pat on the back are motivational to some, but a token of recognition of achievement may offer more.  A colorful certificate to congratulate an employee for achieving a health-related goal is one example.
• Public recognition. Most people love to see their names in print.  Publish the names of wellness program participants in your employee newsletter. This will honor the employees who have attempted to make positive lifestyle changes and can motivate others to do the same.
• Merchandise.  Award a t-shirt, canvas bag, gift certificate/gift card, or an AM/FM radio to participants who sign up and/or complete a program. Your company logo may be imprinted on these items as well.
• Monetary rewards.  Offer an employee $10 for completing a wellness program.  Discount health insurance premiums for participants. Reimburse employees for attending a health-related educational training seminar.  Food. Offer beverages and healthy snacks to employees who participate in on-site wellness programs. Use gift certificates to a local restaurant or grocery stores as door prizes.  Entertainment. Hold a drawing for movie tickets, sporting events tickets, or health food store gift certificates for participants of wellness programs.
• Time off. Allow employees to take an extended lunch break or a half-day of leave for completing a long-term, company-sponsored wellness program.

Get Started Today!

You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.

Water Availibility

Promote healthy eating and nutrition at your small business by making water available throughout the day. Drinking water is essential for keeping your body functioning normally and preventing dehydration. Water, one of the most important and often overlooked nutrients, plays many roles in body processes. Water regulates body temperature, transports nutrients to cells, carries waste products away, helps cushion joints, protects organs and tissues, and helps in weight loss efforts.

Dehydration, the loss of body water, can have a detrimental effect.  Dehydration can begin as thirst, but can quickly progress to effects such as fatigue, headache, dizziness, weakness, and delirium, and in the worst case, even death. In Colorado‘s dry climate, it is always important to drink water regularly.  It‘s even more important when being physically active.

Water is a great alternative to soda and high-calorie beverages that offer little nutritional value.  Many vending machines in the workplace are fully stocked with soda and sugar-filled beverages.  Providing water at company functions and making it more available and visible to employees may help them choose water more often.

Small Biz Action Steps

• Educate employees about the importance of water and hydration through the company newsletter, emails, and posters/table tents in the cafeteria or around the building.
• Incorporate the message of drinking more water into existing health and fitness programs offered in the worksite. Encourage employees to set goals to drink more water along with other health and fitness goals.
• Make water available through water fountains and water coolers in break rooms, hallways, and lobbies. If budgetary constraints do not allow for purchase of water, initiate a program to get employees to contribute a small monthly donation that would fund bottled drinking water.
• Serve bottled water or water from pitchers at staff meetings as an alternative to coffee and soda. Try adding lemons and/or limes; toss in some fresh mint leaves; or mix in a bit of orange juice to add variety.
• Make water available in vending machines.  Discuss with the vending representative the potential for adding water to the beverage inventory.

Get Started Today!

You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.

Promote healthy eating options at your small business by offering healthful food choices at company meetings and functions, employees have increased opportunities for making healthy food choices at work that, in turn, benefit their health.  Also, offering healthy food choices and alternatives at company functions shows employees that their employer cares about their health and well-being.

Small Biz Action Steps

Here is a list of suggestions for healthful meals and snacks:

Breakfast meetings

• Fruit and/or 100 percent fruit juices
• Whole grain cereal and low-fat dairy or soy milk
• Low-fat yogurt
• Bagels and reduced-fat cream cheese
• English muffins

Lunch meetings

• Baked chicken with vegetables and brown rice
• Pasta with vegetables
• Box lunches: sandwiches with fruit
• Veggie pizza
• Vegetable soups
• Green salads
• Bean and veggie burritos
• Lean meats

Afternoon or mid-morning meetings

• Fruit: apples, oranges, grapes, raisins, 100 percent juice
• Sliced vegetables with low-fat dip
• Low-fat milk or yogurt
• Pretzels
• Nuts, trail mixes
• Baked tortilla chips with salsa
• Reduced-fat crackers, graham crackers, animal crackers
• Air-popped popcorn

Get Started Today!

You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.