Why drinking coffee could be good for your health and your business
Drinking coffee offers a whole host of health benefits that you can harness to improve employee motivation, satisfaction and performance.
For many people, a cup of coffee is an essential part of the daily routine and a lot of workers find it difficult to get going in the morning without that all-important caffeine fix.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Good for your health
While drinking too much coffee has been criticised in the past, recent research has shown that a few cups of the black stuff can actually be beneficial to your health.
Caffeine is a psychostimulant which means it can reduce fatigue, improve concentration and even improve long term memory and brain function. As well as these improvements to cognitive abilities, drinking coffee regularly can also have a positive impact on your long term physical health.
Regular coffee intake can strengthen the heart and widen the respiratory tract, as well as helping to reduce rates of heart disease, stroke, some types of cancer, and neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease. It is thought that coffee can even help to protect your DNA, with over 1000 plant substances that contain anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and cancer-preventing properties.
Of course, as in most areas of life, it’s all about moderation, and experts estimate that the perfect amount of coffee to drink in order to enjoy these health benefits is three or four cups per day. The type of coffee you drink can also have an impact, with espresso more easily digested in the stomach, and filter coffee better for those with high cholesterol.
Office coffee
So how can you ensure that your employees reap the benefits from this so-called wonder drug?
The obvious answer is to make it readily available in your place of work. And we’re not talking poor quality instant granules here. Today’s employees expect good quality coffee so think about investing in a new coffee machine or even exploring coffee bar rental or an in-house cafe as a way of enabling your workers to enjoy fresh, barista coffee without having to leave the premises. You can choose to charge people either a full or subsidised rate, or you may prefer to offer the coffee for free as a perk of employment.
There are tons of examples out there of companies who are doing this kind of thing successfully, particularly in America where employees of companies such as Conagra Brands can enjoy craft coffee from in-house cafes or mobile coffee carts.
Business benefits
As well as benefiting your workers’ health (potentially cutting down on sickness-related absences), providing good quality coffee at your place of work can also offer advantages to your business. The much-needed energy boost provided by a cup of the black stuff can have a positive impact on productivity levels, as well as helping to boost morale and motivation – all good news for the company’s bottom line. What’s more, when combined with other positive workplace initiatives, providing coffee as an employment perk can help to increase recruitment and retention levels, which is why companies like Henry’s Coffee is in such high demand today.
With so much to recommend it, it’s easy to see why coffee is one of the most widely sold legal drugs in the world. And by harnessing the feel-good properties of coffee, your employees are more likely to feel motivated, work harder and stay with your company for longer.