It’s no secret that improved health makes people happier and more productive.
In fact, supporting the good health of your company’s employees can be a key factor in attracting, retaining, and nurturing the very best talent for your team. By providing employees with healthy office snacks for their palates and well-being, you can go a long way toward increasing engagement, innovation, and morale at a surprisingly low cost.
Here are 20 surprising benefits of a healthy snack delivery service that you may not have thought about.
Improve Nutrition and Overall Health
1. Increases Sustained Energy
Sugar-laden processed foods, snacks full of trans fats, or a mighty carb-overload can result in awful energy crashes come mid-afternoon. As prolific as junk food is in the modern office, it’s no wonder that the “afternoon slump” has become so commonly accepted in our work culture.
Having healthy snacks at your office work against energy crashes by providing nutrition along with fantastic taste. Foods that balance protein, fat, and carbohydrates, such as Kind’s Cranberry Almond Fruit and Nut Delight, are an ideal choice for keeping your team energized for hours at a time.
2. Improves Cognitive Function
Recent studies have shown that foods high in trans fat take a serious, long-term toll on memory, sharpness, and concentration. On the other side of the coin, an article from Web MD has reported that foods rich in antioxidants, proteins, and B vitamins provide excellent support for concentration, memory, and cognition. By providing on-site access to foods rich in these nutrients, such as fruit bars by That’s It, you can nurture the very best in your staff’s mental capabilities.
3. Better Nutrition for a Better Mood
4. Physical Health Boosts Mental Health
The beneficial effects of improved physical health on one’s mental well-being are nearly boundless. In addition to improved mood, cognitive function, and energy, better health goes a long way toward stress management and self-esteem. What better way to encourage your team members to believe in themselves, think creatively, take risks, and find the courage to present bold new ideas?
Increase Productivity and Morale
5. Improved Focus
A healthy snack delivery service will keep your team sharp, so avoid foods rich in harmful trans fats and invest in lighter substitutes, such as Barbara’s cheese puffs. To boost focus even further, choose snacks full of antioxidants and healthy fats. A trail mix including almonds, dried berries, and dark chocolate would be a delicious way to promote mental acuity throughout the day, nurturing productivity and efficiency while keeping palates happy.
6. Healthy Snacks Can Make Healthy Meals
It happens all the time in American work culture. A person forgets to bring in their packed lunch, then needs to go to a restaurant or fast food establishment where they’ll spend time and money they may not be able to afford, on less-than-nourishing food, because they believe that’s their best option. If they’re especially pressed for time or money, they’ll grab a candy bar from the vending machine instead, leading to sugar crashes and energy slumps soon afterward.
A monthly delivery of healthy office snacks can help your team avoid such measures. By providing a balanced range of nutrition, a well-rounded snack selection can be mixed-and-matched into a variety of delicious, makeshift meals that will give the mind and body what they need to perform their best, even for the tightest of budgets.
7. Accessibility Means Less Time Off-Site
When snacks and beverages aren’t readily available onsite, employees are left with little choice but to rely on off-site shops, fast food restaurants, and coffee shops to replenish their systems throughout the day.
By keeping the break room stocked with the healthy snacks for their tastes and nutritional needs, you’ll ensure that when hunger strikes your team, they’ll have no need to venture from the work environment and lose valuable time off-site.
8. A Heightened Sense of Mutual Respect
Every perk or benefit offered by a business sends a clear message to its employees. By ordering a monthly box of healthy snacks to ensure employee health and happiness, you’re telling them that they are valued, and that their well-being matters to you. This contributes greatly to a work environment built on mutual trust and respect, qualities cited by HR World as key components in boosting dedication and morale.
Competitive Recruiting and Stronger Retention
9. A Highly Popular Perk
In polling the most popular employee perks of 2014, Forbes listed free food at #2 and physical health at #3. A ready supply of healthy office snacks supports both of these appealing options at once, thus standing out as a major selling point to candidates choosing their next professional home.
10. Greater Inclusiveness
In the past, employees with allergies, dietary restrictions, and other health issues often found themselves left out during traditional food-based office events. Having Celiac disease can be a little brutal when the rest of the office is enjoying a pizza day. For those who can’t eat tree nuts or animal products (or who have to omit both), business lunches and parties can be even more challenging.
Providing the snacks for those with dietary restrictions stands as a welcoming gesture to those who might feel a little marginalized in the world of burgers, chips, and candy bars. This foundation of respect and inclusion can go a long way in building excellent, long-term relationships with a valued team member.
11. A Means of Building Connections
For millennia, the sharing of good food has served as a valuable means of social bonding. Even today, friendships are forged in shared recipes and dietary interests. By introducing new, tasty snack options to your team, you’ll encourage them to take a moment, enjoy, and bond over shared favorites. Consider it the world’s most covert team-building exercise.
12. Happy, Healthy Employees Are More Inclined to Stay
When a team member contributes useful ideas, hard work, a unique rapport with clients, or a masterful proficiency with a valued skill, you want them to stay the course. There are many ways you can build trust in the workplace, show appreciation, and make the work environment a fun and fulfilling place to spend one’s time.
Promoting your team’s health and happiness with a healthy snack delivery program accomplishes all three, making it one of the easiest, most budget-friendly options for encouraging employee retention.
Money Saved and Room to Grow
13. Increased Retention Means Time and Money Saved
Hiring new employees is an expensive, time consuming process. Unless it’s spurred by rapid growth, the recruitment process can actually impede business development as revenue and work hours are redirected toward candidate screening, interviews, and training. When you find gifted, dedicated employees who share your passion for the mission at hand, you want to keep them for as long as possible.
By encouraging them to make your business their professional home, you not only save time, money, and resources, but encourage the growth of your business as a family of valued team members who collaborate well and nurture each others’ accomplishments.
14. Fewer Sick Days Used
Nutrient dense foods are key in keeping the immune system in optimal condition. By keeping your team well-nourished with healthy foods, you’ll help them fend off the yearly cold and flu outbreaks that send so many businesses grinding to a halt. When an employee can stave off a nasty bug, come to work feeling great, and avoid passing illness on to others, everybody wins.
15. Reduced Health Care Premiums
When your team enjoys the benefits of a work environment that promotes good health, something wonderful happens over time. Chronic conditions ease up. People find themselves less susceptible to winter colds and other bugs. As they get older, they maintain their good health for decades, minimizing the effects of aging on their systems.
For companies that provide healthcare to their workforce, this means a considerable reduction in premium costs, as well as the knowledge that the members of your professional family will be around for a good, long time.
16. An Alternative Option for Small Startups
Of course, not every company can afford to provide healthcare to its team. Small startups are particularly vulnerable in terms of cost and expense, and most of them simply don’t have the capital to invest in a health plan. Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to support the good health of your team members. Providing easy access to healthy snack foods is a wonderful start, but company hikes, fitness challenges, and yoga classes can also offset the lack of health coverage substantially.
17. Delivery Programs Offer Reliability and Customization
For those who sign up with a reliable, trusted healthy snack delivery service, businesses can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with reliability. These programs are often built on transparency and communication, meaning you’ll never have a package show up without an office favorite unless you’ve been warned in advance. These services also provide customization, allowing you to select the best office snacks for the needs of your budget (with Dollar Snack Club try 6 healthy snacks for $1 per month), or the palates of your team.
Making a Better World
18. Healthy Habits Extending Home and Beyond
Studies by UNICEF have shown that when people pick up good habits at work or school, they tend to take them home and share them with their families. These healthy choices are then typically adopted by their family members, who go out and share them with their friends and colleagues in turn.
By providing healthy snack delivery to encourage proper nutrition, you can take pride in nurturing the health of an ever-expanding network of friends and loved ones, with your team member at its focal point.
19. Whole Food Consumption Promotes a Healthy Economy
While industrial agriculture certainly has its place in today’s economy, multiple studies have established that nurturing smaller farms and independent agriculture is a vital step toward keeping our food sources safe, diverse, plentiful, and nutritious.
By opting out of traditional junk food in favor of minimally processed snacks, you exercise the power to redistribute revenue to these smaller, independent farms. This not only promotes the accessibility of nutritious food to our culture as a whole, but also keeps the economy well-balanced and ideal for the growth of all businesses across the board.
20. Philanthropic Partnerships
Most thriving start-ups in today’s socio-economic culture have made a point to include philanthropy as a core value to their missions. On a completely pragmatic level, it serves as a savvy PR move. However, it also allows business owners to go home knowing they’ve contributed to the world on more than one level.
Start-ups in particular can demand long hours and a great deal of energy from their teams, so it’s highly beneficial to them when they know that a portion of revenue earned will be sent back out into the world to help those less fortunate. SnackNation stands out as an example, donating a month’s worth of multi-nutrient packs to a hungry child for each healthy snack delivery made.
Even if your business already supports a worthy endeavor, supporting a company with a good cause of its own will only give you another avenue for making the world a brighter place.
Conclusion
When employees have easy access to delicious, nutrient-rich foods, everyone benefits from their improved health, productivity, and fulfillment. Utilizing a delivery service to provide your team with healthy office snacks for their needs is a customizable, budget-friendly way to bring these multiple benefits into your work space.
If you’re interested in trying a healthy snack delivery service for your office, SnackNation offers a sample box to each new customer for free, with only shipping and handling charged at a low, flat rate of $9.95. Find out more about this offer here and order your team’s sample box today.
How does the availability of healthy food (or lack thereof) impact your workplace? Have you noticed the benefits of introducing healthier options? Share your experiences in the comments below.
Thanks for the information. Really helpful content regarding the health benefits of snacks. Reading this article made me love with snacks.