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Case Study: Kraft

Kraft Foods has around 1,500 employees in the UK and Ireland, including Cheltenham (headquarters) and Banbury (coffee manufacture and R&D). Providing opportunities for employees to lead healthier lifestyles is part of its wider approach to health and wellness. This driving principle spans the company's programme of product reformulation, the way it communicates about its products and its community work.

Kraft Foods believes in encouraging employee participation in health and wellness activities by choice and tries to build all employee activity around the principle of a healthy balance between nutrition and physical activity.

The programme was established in 2004 and has integrated well with existing workstreams of occupational health, sports and social activities and flexible working programmes. The programme is based around three key areas:

• Information: giving employees the opportunity to learn more about health and wellbeing. Communication channels include intranet bulletins, the employee magazine, onsite posters and plasma screens. The information is also themed, for example, under heart health, weight management and bone health, often in conjunction with the NHS calendar
• Special events: supporting participation in local / national events such as the London to Brighton Bike Ride. There are also Healthy Living weeks at the offices and factory sites, bike to work weeks, ad hoc health checks, health and fitness information, as well as cookery demos, recipe features and 5-a-day promotions
• Personal wellbeing: weekly on-site therapies include massage, reflexology, chiropody and aromatherapy. Exercise classes, including yoga and pilates, are also available either on-site or nearby Kraft Foods has introduced a variety of ongoing initiatives.
  
  From a diet perspective, salads, fruit and reduced fat or calorie choices are always available in staff restaurants and a recent introduction has been the healthy breakfast bar, providing employees with a balanced range of breakfast foods to start the day.

On the activity front, the company has facilities to support active travel, including bike racks, lockers and showers. Alongside the weekly exercise classes, a number of sports clubs are run by employees for employees, such as football, netball and lunchtime running and walking clubs.

The company's occupational health teams provide health checks as well as bespoke health information for function-specific staff – such as production line or field sales, for example – smoking cessation and alcohol awareness support.

The health checks are very popular, with high numbers of employees taking part in the cardiovascular screenings, the annual 'blood pressure week' at Banbury, 'mini MOTs' (which are offered to hard-to-reach employees such as field staff), and flu vaccinations.

Employee uptake and involvement in all areas has been excellent and participation in activities such as exercise classes and sports clubs have become part of the fabric of the business.

More Information

FDF has published a booklet called Workplace Wellbeing: The Food Industry in Action (pdf, 984kb) which features many workplace wellbeing schemes .

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