Colleagues can encourage employees' healthy eating habits

Colleagues can encourage employees' healthy eating habits

Scientists from Cologne and Utrecht have found that employees are more likely to eat fruit and vegetables and exercise when their colleagues promote a healthy lifestyle. Employees' healthy eating habits also correlate positively with their colleagues' fruit and vegetable consumption.

However, if a colleague does a lot of sports, it doesn't encourage others to emulate him. Although explicit encouragement of physical exercise has a positive effect, employees tend not to follow the behavior of other more physically active colleagues. The scientists conclude that encouraging colleagues and one's own overall healthy behavior have the potential to help create a culture of health in the workplace and support all employees in making healthy choices. The study was conducted by Professor Dr. Lea Ellwardt from the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology (ISS) at the University of Cologne and Anne van der Put from the Institute of Sociology at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Utrecht University. Her article, “Healthy Diet and Employee Physical Activity: The Role of Coworker Encouragement and Behavior,” was published in BMC Public Health.

Exercise and healthy eating are not just individual decisions; they are influenced by family members, friends or neighbors. However, little is known about the role of employees, which is another important interpersonal influence. People spend long hours at work, surrounded by mostly the same colleagues, who could therefore have a significant influence on employees' (un)healthy decisions. The researchers examined the extent to which colleagues can influence each other's eating and exercise behavior by focusing on two pathways: colleagues can promote a healthy lifestyle or act as role models whose behavior can be observed and copied.

The team used the European Sustainable Workforce Survey with data from 4,345 employees in 402 teams in 113 organizations. “Our study showed that employees are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables and exercise when their colleagues encourage a healthy lifestyle,” said Ellwardt. However, contrary to their expectations, van der Put and Ellwardt found a negative relationship between the physical activity of employees and colleagues when no explicit encouragement was involved. “One explanation for our negative result could be that physical activity typically takes place outside of working hours, where it is hardly visible to colleagues,” Ellwardt concluded. People often eat together with colleagues at work every day, while physical activity takes place privately, making it less susceptible to social influences.

The study considers both colleagues' encouragement and their actual behavior, addressing behavior-specific encouragement rather than general social support, and examining behaviors that also occur outside the workplace. Ellwardt explained: "The study is one of the first to address the role of employee behavior using a network approach that includes direct colleagues. This allowed for a more fine-grained analysis than aggregating measures at the individual level or in relation to employees who may not work in close proximity."

Overall, encouraging colleagues and engaging in healthy behaviors have the potential to help create a culture of health in the workplace and support all employees in making healthy choices. The authors believe this holds promise for public health managers and decision-makers. "Our study implies that when designing health interventions, it is important to include the work environment alongside other social actors such as partners, family members and friends. Colleagues are relevant sources of social support when it comes to healthy behavior and can act as role models," concludes Ellwardt. Crucially, peer encouragement and behavior not only helps create a culture of health in the workplace, but also indirectly supports the entire working population, including those who do not take advantage of dedicated workplace programs.

Future research would benefit from using longitudinal data to examine influence processes over time, the authors believe. Because individuals internalize cues from their environment to shape their intrinsic motivation, this study may reveal how long it takes for a new employee to acclimate to the current workplace health norm.

Source:

University of Cologne

Reference:

van der Put, A & Ellwardt, L., (2022) Healthy diet and physical activity of employees: The role of encouragement and behavior of colleagues. BMC Public Health. doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14394-0.

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