Healthier employees achieve better work results thanks to workforce nutrition

Workforce Nutrition Alliance launches a new capacity building programme for executives and HR professionals

Utrecht, 15 April 2022. The Workforce Nutrition Alliance is launching a comprehensive three-step programme to help kick-start workforce nutrition in international companies.

Last year, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) assessed the largest food and agriculture companies across the world by on their contributions to transforming the global food system and helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The results were published in the Food & Agriculture Benchmark, providing a performance overview and ranking of 350 corporations, headquartered in 141 different countries and employing 23.5 million people globally.

In their conclusions, WBA highlighted the need to provide sustainable livelihoods for farmers, decent employment for workers and nutritious choices for consumers, and all without depleting natural resources.

“By taking care of their employees, companies can improve people’s nutritional status,” says Viktoria de Bourbon de Parme, Food Transformation Lead at World Benchmarking Alliance. “Promoting workforce nutrition in companies’ value chain would have a huge additional scaling effect.”

The results of the Food & Agriculture Benchmark indicated positive trends. One quarter of all companies are implementing one or more workforce programmes.

Workforce nutrition is an essential tool for corporations that take responsibility in looking after their employees.

“It also makes very good business sense,” confirms Dr. Bärbel Weiligmann, Lead Workforce Nutrition at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. “It delivers proven benefits since a healthier workforce typically means better productivity and lower absenteeism, combined with higher employee retention and staff loyalty.

Flagship programme ‘Workforce Nutrition Masterclass 2022’

The first step of the new programme is ‘Fast Track for Leaders’, made up of two one-hour webinars.

“We’re providing executives with the essentials for creating an effective workforce nutrition strategy and the necessary tools for successful implementation across their organisation,” explains Mirjam Kneepkens, Senior Associate at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition.

The second element is the ‘Roadmap to Implementation’, a one-hour online session that familiarises worksite managers with workforce nutrition and its implementation at their worksites.

“The flagship part of the programme is the three-month ‘Workforce Nutrition Masterclass’, which will run from September to November 2022,” adds Kneepkens. “Participating HR professionals will receive practical support from experts and learn from peers to create and implement a workforce nutrition programme at their respective worksites.”

The masterclass is organised in line with the workforce nutrition pillars: healthy food at work, nutrition education, nutrition-focused health checks and breastfeeding support.

“One actionable step companies can take to improve their Food & Agriculture Benchmark score is to promote nutrition at work through a set of interventions focusing on awareness about, and supply of, healthy foods,” confirms WBA’s Viktoria de Bourbon de Parme. “These programmes can have a positive impact on SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 3 (good health and wellbeing) and, importantly, SDG 5 (gender equality).

Executives and HR professionals can sign up to the Workforce Nutrition Masterclass here.