With 58% of the world’s population spending one third of their time at work during their adult life, there is a clear opportunity to use the workplace to improve nutritional status and tackle poor diets, now the biggest cause of ill health in every country. In fact, one in three people around the world are malnourished, and it impacts all people across income groups, job types and exists from farm to consumers.
Today’s consumer goods retailers and brands are important employers within communities around the world, so there is a clear case for our industry to play an active role in supporting employees to live healthier. However, there are shortcomings with current workplace programmes. For example, only a small percent of the global workforce who work in corporate offices in high income countries have access to healthy food options at work and most employers in supply chains provide food to meet a regulatory requirement; and is not necessarily nutritious.
Beyond employee health, we also know that workplace nutrition and health programmes can have significant benefits for employees, employers and the society. At an organisational-level, healthy employees can lead to reduced absenteeism, enhanced productivity, lower rates of accidents and mistakes, greater job satisfaction and financial benefits. And, at the macro-level, we see healthy employees having a positive impact on the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 3 (good health and wellbeing) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth).
However, there are various challenges that employers face in implementing workforce nutrition programmes at scale, including lack of awareness, limited incentive, high resource requirement and complex implementation. Through the Workforce Nutrition Alliance, co-founded by the CGF and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), organisations are coming together to support employers to adopt workforce nutrition programmes. It is aligned with the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit, and its goal is to positively impact three million employees in their organisations and supply chains by 2025.
This journey will include a self-assessment of the current situation, setting targets and making commitments, developing a plan to meet the targets, accessing implementation support, monitoring and reporting on impact, and reaping the rewards.
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