How can your business better support employees with certain diet requirements?

The increasing diversity of the modern workforce has brought many benefits to employers. It has also brought some challenges. One of these is to support employees with dietary restrictions. Fortunately, this challenge can usually be easily overcome with a little consideration and planning.

To explain further, Craig Sellars, Operations Manager at Workplace Refreshments shares his insight into how your business can better support employees through meeting various diet requirements.

Eating habits in the 21st century

For most of the 20th century, the standard meal was meat, potatoes, and another vegetable. This was so common; it’s still remembered as “meat and two veg”. By the latter part of the 20th century, being vegetarian was considered acceptable (albeit still very niche). Veganism, however, was still practically unknown.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, eating habits in the UK have changed dramatically. There have been many factors driving this. Three of the most important ones are allergies, religious and ethical beliefs and health and lifestyle concerns.

Likewise, there are several reasons why employers need to work to accommodate these dietary changes. Two of the most important ones are the law and practicality.

The law and an individual’s dietary requirements

If an individual has special dietary requirements for health reasons (e.g., allergies), then supporting them is likely to be a requirement under health and safety. If an individual has special dietary requirements for religious and/or other ethical reasons, then supporting them is likely to be a requirement under the Equality Act 2010.

Under the current interpretation of the law, ethical veganism is protected under the Equality Act 2010 (Casamitjana v the League Against Cruel Sports). Vegetarianism is not although this could well be challenged.

Even without the law, it makes sense to do as much as reasonably possible to accommodate employees’ dietary habits. The simple reality is that employers are always in competition with each other for the best candidates. That means either you support your employees, or you lose talent to other employers who do.

Dealing with allergies

For most employers, dealing with allergies should be a top priority. In a worst-case scenario, they can literally kill people. What’s more, you can never be completely sure who does and does not have them.

Employees who know they have allergies will generally make their employer aware of this. The problem is that employees may have allergies without knowing it. You may also have visitors with allergies. Even if they know about them, you may not.

The good news is that most allergy issues can be dealt with simply by a combination of proper labelling and providing alternatives. The potential exception is nuts and seeds. These are common allergens and are very easily spread. You may therefore wish to consider banning them from the workplace. If this is a step too far, you could restrict where they can be stored and/or eaten.

Accommodating religious and/or ethical beliefs

Your starting point here is to ensure that all relevant employees are thoroughly trained in the Equality Act 2010. One of the key points to communicate is that employees in leadership and management roles need to act as role models. They also need to ensure that other people follow their example as much as can reasonably be expected.

Sometimes, this can include training employees on diversity issues and/or curbing “workplace banter”. It may also require them to enforce certain aspects of workplace etiquette.

For example, if there is a workplace kitchen, certain employees may have to be reminded to clean up after themselves (no matter how busy they are). This is polite to all other employees. It’s particularly important for employees with special dietary requirements. They will not want to have to clean up somebody else’s food mess (and may not be able to).

Your next step is to look at the general running of your workplace and whether it needs to be adjusted to accommodate specific dietary requirements. To do this, itemise all the places food and drinks are prepared and/or eaten. Then see how easy it is for people with special dietary requirements to use these areas.

Take a look at your catering

Often, small changes are all that are needed to make a workplace more accommodating. For example, if your beverage vending machine only dispenses beverages with dairy milk, you could have some options with non-dairy milk. Alternatively, you could have it dispense milk-free drinks and provide a non-dairy milk in a nearby fridge.

Similarly, any time you provide food, make sure that there are options for employees with specific dietary requirements. Feel free to order large portions of these. Generally, employees with wider diets will be happy to eat them too.

Examine your kitchen provision

If you’re providing facilities for employees to make their own food, think about employees with special dietary requirements. All employees should be able to leave their food in a workplace kitchen without having to worry about what will happen to it. It is, however, particularly important for employees with special dietary requirements. They need to know that their food will not have been contaminated by food they can’t eat.

Likewise, make sure that people with special dietary requirements can prepare food with uncontaminated utensils. How you deal with this is likely to depend on what facilities you have available. For example, some workplaces may be able to provide dedicated facilities for people on certain diets (e.g., meat-free areas). Others may give certain people special equipment or just make sure that standard equipment is thoroughly cleaned after each use.

Going beyond food

Keep in mind that a person’s dietary requirements are likely to be mirrored in other areas of their life. For example, if somebody does not eat meat from a particular animal (e.g., pigs or cows), they probably won’t want to use other products from that animal (e.g., leather). If somebody does not eat meat at all, they probably don’t want to use other animal products.

It’s down to each employer to work out what steps can be taken to accommodate this. Generally, this boils down to working out when something is necessary and when it is a preference. This generally depends on context.

It’s also worth noting that something that’s deemed necessary at one point in time may become unnecessary at a later date (and vice versa). This means that it’s advisable to review policies regularly.