LISBON — Employees at Dingley Press, recently recognized by Healthy Androscoggin for its innovations in employee health, take their passion for food and desire for good health seriously.

Employees have organized on-site nutrition education, have compiled a company cookbook to share favorite healthy recipes and have partnered with a local farm to offer employees community supported agriculture.

“I’m really passionate about food and nutrition,” said Jessie Delaney-Edwards, human resources coordinator at the Dingley Press in Lisbon. When she was hired six years ago, organizing a wellness committee for the catalog printing company was one of her first assignments.

Under her guidance, the wellness team at Dingley Press was recognized this year by Healthy Androscoggin as participants in the Work Healthy workplace wellness program.

Delaney-Edwards believes Dingley was selected as an innovator “because of our cooking club and the free CSA share that we make available to our employees on a weekly drawing basis, throughout the late spring and summer.”

Like Dingley, dozens of local employers participate in Healthy Androscoggin’s workplace wellness programs to promote healthy lifestyle choices, provide information to employees about general public health issues and help employees incorporate strategies to help prevent chronic disease.

These goals are tied to evidence that employers who support the wellness of their employees will benefit from higher morale, reduced absenteeism and possibly lower health insurance costs.

Delaney-Edwards said starting a wellness committee and building an atmosphere of healthy living in a workplace can take some time — you need to work on creating what she calls “buy in” from employees.

She started the process with food.

“The cooking club,” Delaney-Edwards said, “evolved from me wracking my brain to figure out how to engage our hard-working employees in making healthier choices.”

Beginning with the basic premise that “everybody likes food,” she began by posting recipes (with take-home photocopies) on the wellness bulletin board.

“It took a while for people to start taking copies home, but then I began to get complaints if I didn’t update the board or put out enough copies, or if I didn’t pre-punch holes in them so they could be stored in a three ring binder!”

Their next step was to sponsor a healthy recipe cooking contest, held during one of the company’s wellness fairs.

“Then we incorporated healthy eating food logs and watching videos about the food industry (such as “Super-size Me” and “Forks over Knives”) as part of our annual Move ME Challenge.”

The wellness team also conducts on-site “Lunch and Learn” events, blending healthy foods brought from home along with discussions about varying topics about general wellness — stress reduction, eating fewer processed foods, or how to reshape a recipe with more healthful ingredients.

To further efforts to help employees incorporate healthier foods into their family diets, Dingley bought half of a community supported agriculture share from Little Ridge Farm in Lisbon, which is given away to one employee each week in a random drawing.

Delaney-Edwards picks up the farm-fresh produce when she picks up her own personal CSA items each week and brings it to work. The winner leaves work with fresh food and coordinating recipes in tow.

The weekly CSA giveaway encourages employees to eat healthier while saving money, buying local and supporting local farmers.

Healthy Androscoggin, the local Healthy Maine Partnership, assists businesses with resources and tools to help put into place a wellness team or committee.

They advise on workplace wellness best practices, and provide resources for policy and programming development to help create a healthier workplace.

Healthy Androscoggin staff can also connect a company to the Wellness Council of Androscoggin County, a networking group that provides education to businesses on a variety of wellness topics.

Nutrition educators at Healthy Androscoggin may also be able to provide on-site nutrition and cooking education. To find out more, contact Katherine Lary at 330-7881 or go to www.healthyandroscoggin.org.