Experience Food at Work

Mary Rose Cook talks about ‘Experience Food at Work’ a pilot initiative aimed at improving eating behaviours in a local authority workplace.

The workplace was identified as a target area to improve eating behaviours as 60% of our waking hours are spent in the workplace and 1/3 of our meals and most of our snacks are eaten there.

Breckland Council offices are situated on an industrial estate in rural Dereham. There are very limited healthy food options available for staff for lunch and so Breckland Council wanted to provide their workforce with healthy food opportunities within a limited budget.

Breckland Council, in partnership with the design consultancy Uscreates, developed and delivered a range of interventions aimed at addressing eating behaviours on their main site. Interventions included a Visiting Chef event providing lunch inspiration, an honesty fruit bowl system providing easily accessible, affordable fruit, Health and Nutrition MOTs giving the workforce 15min one to one sessions with a dietician and the introduction of communal eating facilities to the staff room enabling the workforce to take a quality break away from their desks.

Aims and Objectives

Behavioural Goals:

Increase levels of lunch breaks taken away from workstations
Increase the amount of fruit and vegetables consumed in the workplace
Increase variety of food consumed in workplace

Additional goals included:

Improvement of knowledge on how to make positive changes to nutritional health
Improvement in awareness of nutritional choices and effects on personal health and productivity

Partners

Uscreates – project lead

Breckland District Council – host organisation, key contact: Martin Seymour, Health Improvement Officer

West Norfolk PCT - supported delivery of the Health and Nutrition MOTs.

The Sandwitch Bar - a local business supporting delivery of both the Honesty Fruit Bowl system and Lunch Pack Delivery service.

Sponsors: Mackintosh’s Canteen http://www.mackintoshscanteen.co.uk/

Methodology

The approach to the project was unique, with Uscreates working with the workforce to identify and develop solutions. Creative, engaging consultation methods were designed to gain an understanding of the culture of the workplace and the needs and motivations of the workforce.

For example: - Research ‘probes’ - including a camera task, which asked staff to answer questions by taking pictures, templates that participants filled in with drawings to show work pressures and text questions sent out at regular intervals.

Workforce Interviews/Stakeholder Roundtable – bringing together topic experts and workforce representatives to develop solutions

Creative Idea Generation – using modelling techniques, mini briefs and profiling to generate ideas

Workforce Champion Group – providing feedback on development and supporting delivery.

A number of interventions were developed to address various identified market segmentations.

For example: Health and Nutrition MOTs – 15 min. one to one session with dietician offered to workforce

Honesty Fruit Bowl System – providing easily accessible fruit to workforce

Healthy Lunch Pack Delivery Service – improvement to the existing Sandwich delivery service

Breakout Zone Refresh – encouraging breaks away from desks by improving breakout zone

Visiting Chef Event – Professional Chef demos, specific recipe cards and inspiration tasters

Further information on interventions can be found on the project website.

Promotion

The project was publicised to employees through a dedicated blog that was set up so the project partners and Breckland employees could be informed about developments. In addition, presentations were made at monthly staff briefings and updates were posted on the intranet and inhouse newsletter.

Resources

The main resource was employee’s time and by ensuring all consultation sessions happened within the lunch hour made it possible for many to take part.

‘Experience Food at Work’ was part funded by Breckland Council and by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), who initially funded the start-up of Uscreates.

Evaluation

Behavioural outcomes statistical analysis is currently underway using online questionnaires sent out to staff at regular intervals. Incentives such as restaurant vouchers or organic fruit boxes are used to encourage participation.

This first round data is currently being analysed and further evaluations are planned throughout the year. Promising initial results show that 70% of actions points for change, set during the Health and Nutrition MOTs, have been achieved.

Lessons Learned

One of the main problems was ensuring that the designed interventions would continue after the pilot phase. By involving local businesses in delivery of the interventions ensured that some can be delivered indefinitely, as they are beneficial to both the organisation and the local business.

Future Developments

Funding is currently being sought to develop ‘Experience Food at Work’ through further piloting and development of the initiative with the aim to create a programme that can be used in white-collar workplaces nationwide. Uscreates are interested to hear from organisations and individuals interested in working together to develop this work further.

Contact Name: Mary Rose Cook

Job Title: Social Designer

Phone: 07780684005

Email: us@uscreates.com

Website: www.uscreates.com

Organisation: Uscreates

Address: 24 Fournier Street London E1 6QE

For further commentary, including comments from participants on this case study visit the IDe&A website.

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