Improving the diet and healthy weight support for our workforce

Earlier this year, our East of Scotland Partnership carried out a review of the diet and healthy weight support currently available for our NHS and Local Authority workforce. In light of our findings, we now (August 2020) recommend the following actions:

 

Recommendation 1: For all organisations to have a strategy for staff health and wellbeing.

 

Recommendation 2: For East of Scotland leaders to pledge a minimum requirement for all strategies to include and promote physical activity and good nutrition.

 

Recommendation 3: For all organisations to have a group of representative staff to promote the health and wellbeing of the workforce. Organisations should regard the Healthy Working Lives Award as good and standard practice.

 

Recommendation 4: For all organisations to increase opportunities for staff access to good physical activity and improve on sedentary behaviour.

 

Recommendation 5: For all sites to work towards a Healthy Living Award and ensure that there are options that offer food that are low in fat, salt and sugar.

 

Recommendation 6: Leaders across all organisations to advocate the use of vending machines with healthier options.

 

Recommendation 7: All catering managers and staff to utilise Food Standard Scotland’s MenuCal for food labelling.

 

Recommendation 8: All organisations to collaborate with procurement services and (where possible) external caterers to improve the food environment.

 

Recommendation 9: All organisations and leaders across the East of Scotland to actively protect staff break times and promote flexible working time to include additional time for exercise and meals.

 

Recommendation 10: For all organisations to consider practical and strategic changes to improve access for all staff including shift workers, lone workers and manual workers.

 

Recommendation 11: For all senior managers to complete diet, weight and body image related stigma training.

 

Recommendation 12: For East of Scotland leaders to allocate resources to develop training for all staff to improve diet and healthy weight, for example, taking a Good Conversations approach to understand what matters to staff for their health and wellbeing.

 

For more information about our work with employers, please visit our Employer Scope page.