With an eye on soaring health care costs, companies are becoming more proactive about what their employees eat.
By BusinessWeek
The lawyers at boutique law firm Littler Mendelson have always liked their carbs. For years the firm's sumptuous San Francisco headquarters overflowed with endless trays of Krispy Kremes, gooey sweet rolls and gigantic muffins.
Then one day the attorneys showed up for a firm breakfast and found hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, mini-quiches, cottage cheese and fresh fruit. "Where's the doughnuts?" ranted the associates.
Littler Mendelson's human-resources chief, Suzanne Perez, feared mass sugar withdrawal, but she yanked the junk anyway. And though she's not too popular at the office right now, she's in good company. Google, Yamaha of America, Caterpillar and others are putting health food in corporate break rooms, cafeterias and vending machines, dumping doughnuts in favor of organic fresh fruit and slapping "calorie taxes" on fatty foods.
For several years the company wellness police -- the folks obsessed with bringing down exploding health insurance costs -- have confined themselves to targeting chunky cube dwellers with subsidized cholesterol drugs, free gym memberships and New Age-spouting health coaches. But what good is all that if the office vending machine is filled with candy, cola and chips, or if cookies and cake are served at every meeting?
"I didn't think we were being aggressive enough," says Carol Baker, the HR boss at Yamaha.
But getting junkies to detox isn't easy. "People aren't ready to give up everything," Baker says.
Don't let them eat cake Google, the company famously committed to doing no evil, is a case in point. Yes, the Googleplex swarms with svelte 20-somethings in snug tops and low-slung denim. But even these workers aren't immune to the so-called Google 15 -- the number of pounds Googlers say they typically gain after joining the company and partaking of its famous gratis grub.
As one blogger put it, "I fully expect a Google Infarct Room to be opened within two years."
Google's "micro-kitchens" -- the snack stations within 200 feet of every worker's desk -- were like small 7-Elevens.
"We kept adding things and adding things and adding things," says Google's former food-services chief, John Dickman. Like 20 kinds of sugared cereal. Or, in the cafeteria, the Luther Burger, a bacon-cheese number with Krispy Kreme doughnuts as the bun.
It wasn't long before some Googlers were pondering the philosophical implications on the company's in-house message boards. Wretched excess with stock options was one thing. But wasn't free junk food kind of, ahem, evil?
Yet when Dickman ditched the M&M's, employees argued that the measure was about costs, not calories. (That was a hard case to make given Google's valet parking, free massages and bidet-equipped restrooms.)
"There were certain things they couldn't live without," Dickman says. So the M&M's returned. But the junk-healthful ratio is now 50-50, with agave-sweetened beverages, roasted nuts, sulfate-free dried fruit and platters of organic crudités.
At Yamaha, Baker has done away with the "zillions" of pies in favor of regular shipments of organic fruit from San Francisco's Fruit Guys, whose business in providing workplaces across the U.S. with pesticide-free, locally grown fruit is exploding. (It turns out that fruit is cheaper than the pies.)
Lunchtime is another battle. Yamaha's Buena Park, Calif., headquarters is situated near a thoroughfare chockablock with fast-food joints. So Baker brought in a catering company offering healthful salads and sandwiches.
"We're trying to change people's behaviors," she says.
The 'calorie tax' Baker soon found out that employees were not the only resisters.
"The vending machine people were not very supportive," she says. At first, she says, they grudgingly tossed in some trail mix and stuck a little heart sticker next to those fluorescent orange crackers with peanut butter.
But within weeks, the potato chips and candy bars were back. Junk moves.
That's why some companies are getting to employees' stomachs through their wallets. After Caterpillar offered garden burgers in its cafeteria for a buck last year, sales soared fivefold, to 2,500 a month. At mortgage giant Freddie Mac, workers who order six healthful meals in the cafeteria get the seventh free.
Florida Power & Light, Dow Corning and Sprint Nextel all charge more for unhealthful food (the so-called calorie tax) and less for more healthful fare. At Pitney Bowes, they moved the desserts away from the cash register to curb impulse buys.
Some companies feel like a re-education camp. Microsoft's food honcho, Mark Freeman, created a color-coded system of icons to help make the healthful stuff as recognizable as a Snickers bar. (Microsoft is the publisher of MSN Money).
In each of Microsoft's 31 cafeterias, there are icons for vegan, gluten-free, organic, sustainable, sugar-free, carb control and nondairy. Freeman has also made the company's metropolislike headquarters a trans-fat-free zone.
At first, "everybody was yelling and screaming about the healthy food," Freeman says. But the Microserfs are coming around.
For those who don't, there is always tough love. HR types swarmed the New York Marriott Marquis hotel in February to learn how to implement lean-worker campaigns, biggest-loser contests and strategic-eating seminars. During breaks over yogurt and fruit, the attendees swapped war stories about how overweight workers eat up health-care dollars.
As one executive from a major software company quipped: "We're waging a war on fat people."
Junk food lovers, beware. These people are serious.
This article was reported and written by Michelle Conlin for BusinessWeek.
Published May 8, 2008
Commentary by Arianna: Seriously? Management is working people to death at law firms and tech companies across the nation and what workers need most is health food? Now I personally believe in all the healthy perks in the world. I think a healthy vending machine and gym memberships are fabulous. HOWEVER, the thing that would be the most healthy for American workers, UM... MORE TIME OFF! No duh! There are studies on top of studies that show that our European counterparts have much lower rates of depression, divorce, alcoholism, heart disease, and other health issues because they have MUCH MORE VACATION TIME! Children are better adjusted because they have paid maternity leave.
So to the HR people, keep your hands OFF of my candy drawer at work and convince my boss that it is actually a GOOD thing for me to not come in on the weekends and holidays, OK?
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