By Joydeep Bhattacharya
Nobody likes to work for peanuts.
Probably, it’s time things changed. Fruits, baked chips, health drinks, berries, dry fruits, and fibrous nuts are the new ‘offers they can’t refuse’. Snack time is an integral part of every employee’s workday.
As an employer, you can transform snack time into health time, and in the journey, make the workplace an employee magnet, for both the current roster, as well as those great talents out seeking jobs in the market.
Position Your Business As A Unique, Exciting, and People Focused Workplace
Whether you’re managing a startup, or an established business, it always works to offer something unique to prospective employees.
The modern job seeker looks for a lot more than just the remunerations; workplace quality and day-in-life experience at work matters a lot. Something as amazing as a daily rendezvous with exciting healthy snacks is bound to sit well this new breed of job seekers.
When you align to the option of offering amazing, healthy, and delicious snacks to employees, the appeal of your workplace elevates immediately, and helps position your business as an exciting employment opportunity for job seekers.
Great Health – A Perk Nobody Can Refuse
When someone seeks a new job, he/she actually seeks a better lifestyle. By offering healthy snacks to your employees, you do a lot more than take care of one of their meals.
You offer them a much desired improvement in lifestyle, without any effort from their side. This makes the option of working in your business a great option for anybody looking to move over to a new job.
After all, when do you think was the last time an employer offered ‘good health’ as a part of the perks!
Positive Word of Mouth in the Jobs Market
Getting great word of mouth for your workplace means you’ll make news in the jobs market for the right reasons, and without investing one advertisement dollar.
Expect your current employees to go out of their way to spread the word on how great a workplace you offer them, especially the daily reverie over fresh, exciting, and super healthy snacks.
This brings in more referral job applications than ever, and helps you staff up sooner than you’d have otherwise hoped for.
Some Complementary Best Practices to Adopt
Here are some important complementary best practices that can and will elevate the reputation of your business as a ‘healthy workplace’.
Focus on Providing Plentiful and Easily Accessible Drinking Water
Ask yourself, can you bring water closer to your employees? If the answer is yes, do so. The average human would do well to drink 3 liters of water every day.
Do your bit to help your employees achieve this target by bringing water coolers and dispensers closer to their seating places.
Get To Know About Employees’ Allergies, Snacks Preferences, Likes, and Dislikes
Improving your selection of healthy workplace snacks is fun, exciting, and super beneficial for anyone who works in your office.
Look to conduct informal surveys to understand more about the kind of healthy snacks that employees prefer.
Also, make note of frequent mentions of allergies to certain kinds of foods, so that you can choose your selection of healthy snacks in a better manner.
Educate Employees on the Urgent Need to Switch to Healthy Food
Break time quick sessions on exciting healthy food options go down well with employees, apart from registering in their brains (hence, likelier to inspire action).
It’s worth every cent to invite a nutrition expert for a fun filled session on educating employees about simple, practical, delicious, and above all, healthy food choices they can make, every day.
Ways to cook quick and healthy snacks, staying healthy while on demanding business tours, and managing issues like stress eating, etc. – there are way too many issues of interest for employees. Help them with education.
The general sense of awareness and concern about workplace eating translates into a massive opportunity for people centric businesses to make their workplaces better.
By providing healthy snacks, and promoting a culture of healthy eating, not only can you get into the mind space of healthy conscious (that’s pretty much 100% of them) employees, but will also be able to retain your current employees.
Joydeep Bhattacharya is a digital marketing evangelist and author of SEOsandwitch.com. He is a regular contributor on publications like Wired, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Hubspot and several other sites.
