NZ Post Case Study
Wholesome Deliveries
When staff were surveyed at New Zealand’s largest mail centre, they requested more wholesome food at vending machines and cooking lessons so they could prepare healthier food at home.
"Highbrook Mail Centre in Auckland seemed a logical place to pilot a wellbeing programme" said Andrew Inde, Group Manager of Safety and Wellbeing.
"The survey was launched to assess the dietary needs of workers at the mail centre and has provided a great starting point for a programme to help them adopt healthier lifestyles."
The centre has 650 employees with a diverse ethnic makeup, predominantly Māori and Pacific people, with an increasing number of Asian staff. Many are shift workers.
"The survey covered a number of factors relating to the wellbeing of the Highbrook employees and supplied some interesting results," Andrew said.
Findings
"While the café offers a broad range of food, including nutritious options, employees, generally, were keen to see more wholesome food available," Andrew said.
Since the café is not open 24 hours, this leaves the vending machines as often the only source of food on the premises. Like most vending machines, they are stocked mainly with chocolate bars, chips and canned drinks.
About 35 percent of staff brought their mid-shift meal from home every day.
"Nevertheless there were still significant numbers who wanted healthier options available at work to try to minimise their consumption of sugary drinks, eat more fruit and vegetables and try to minimise fat and sugar intake," Andrew said.
The survey revealed staff wanted New Zealand Post to support these choices.
Taking Action
Andrew believes the survey has provided a baseline on which to work.
"We are keen to work with food providers to supply healthier options in the vending machines, such as water, zero sugar drinks and low-fat bars and snacks."
"It has also given us additional evidence to endorse other healthy eating initiatives focused on changing nutrition behaviour. For instance, while most people are aware that choosing to eat and cook healthily is important, there are a number of barriers to them making changes: the skill to cook healthy options, access to ‘better’ food, cultural and peer pressure to eat certain foods and the cost of making ‘healthier’ choices."
To help people adopt healthier lifestyles Andrew said his team plans to tap into some of the initiatives being run by Counties Manukau District Health Board and other community groups.
"We want to have people come to the Highbrook site and offer realistic practical advice that our staff can implement over the long term - for instance there are ways to cook food common in Pacific Island communities which improves nutrition and does not affect taste. One example would be cooking corned beef in a way that gets rid of most of the fat, or using low fat cheese in a recipe," Andrew said.
"Our philosophy is to have a programme that facilitates long-term behaviour change and empowers people through education and support to make changes to their lives. Rather that just giving people ‘stuff’ and thinking we have fulfilled our wellness obligations. So instead of just handing out leaflets on healthy food we want to try to make it as easy as possible for people to make positive changes in their life."
Andrew added, "It is also important to us that it is people from our staff’s own communities who come to the site and educate them on how they can cook healthily and make nutritious choices. We do not want something being ‘pushed on them’ from head office."
An example of the challenges New Zealand Post face is the affordability of healthy food provided onsite.
"Independent contractors run most of our site cafés," Andrew said. "The price of food they provide has to be such that it is a worthwhile business for them, but at the same time not so prohibitively expensive that everyone just goes to the dairy down the road."
Andrew said that encouraging and supporting workers to actively improve their wellbeing is entirely appropriate for an employer.
"A healthy employee is a productive employee. We want to ensure our workforce, ten years down the track, is healthy enough to contribute to the company and to live full active lives," Andrew said.
Lessons Learned
The survey, which was carried out in February 2009, had a high uptake from office workers who were able to complete it online. But the response from shift workers, who were given hard-copy questionnaires, was below expectations.
Reasons for this were identified as language barriers and the length of the questionnaire.
"If running another survey, we would consider making it available in languages other than English" Andrew said. "We would also make answering the survey quicker, to encourage a greater uptake among staff".
Just over a third of staff responded to the survey, which was enough to provide useful information.
