“At Nestlé, our purpose is to unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come. Now, more than ever the health and well-being of employees is of upmost importance and nutrition is a key component.
We know that interventions in the workplace can make a real impact on improving health and wellbeing of people. For this reason, Nestlé supports the Workforce Nutrition Alliance a collaboration with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF). The Alliance aims to support and encourage employers to implement workforce nutrition program and to positively impact three million employees by 2025.
To help employees achieve a healthy and balanced lifestyle, Nestlé introduced the #HealthyLives initiative in 2019. The global educational program that takes a holistic approach to wellness, covering multiple dimensions of personal health, such as nutrition, physical activity and mental health. It incentivizes employees to be active and features a series of 13 short videos and brochures, focusing on key risks and encouraging simple and easy changes to avoid them. We compliment this with the Know Your Numbers initiative which helps employees to understand their health risks. The collated data enables us to identify the areas where need to focus in our health and nutrition related programs.
The Alliance’s work is an important activity in helping to promote healthier lives and build sustainable food systems. In parallel, I also welcome UN Food Systems Summit which aims to launch bold new actions to transform the way the world consumes and produces food. Together, we can achieve more for the betterment of people, planet and business.”
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.