Understanding Our Client’s Solution: Our Design Process
50
We listened to our client as they described their desires for future initiatives, specifically the health cafeteria initiative, in an effort to identify patterns and their decision-making process. In meetings early in our project, ideas were often tossed back and forth across the table on ways to improve employee health. They argued that poor health was a result of lack of education on healthy eating. They stated that their employees eat terribly, a statement they made based on the information they handle in their department, such as insurance claims and the cost of benefits packages. They focused the initiative on educating employees to make better choices. By providing education and building awareness in the cafeterias in their three hospital entities—the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Pennsylvania Medical Center, and Presbyterian Hospital—they argued that they would impact behavior and create a healthier workforce. Some of their ideas included branding healthy foods in the cafeteria with Well Focused stickers, their branded health program initiative for UPHS employees, and providing nutritional information for everything offered in the cafeteria. They also had plans in mind for offering discount coupons for the purchase of healthy foods, for example by choosing the turkey burgers instead of the regular beef burger employees could enjoy a $2 discount while also consuming far less fat and calories. They were strongly inclined to hang test tubes filled with sugar from the fountain machine, deterring employees from drinking regular sodas because of the sugar content. They believed that this would greatly impact change. These were just some of their original ideas for educating employees and making them more aware of the consequences of their choices.