Workplace wellness is getting a major technological makeover. No longer a side show, technology is now central to the development and operation of how companies seek to create and promote wellbeing for employees. While decisions about wellness programmes remain in the hands of managers, computers and mobile devices can be in the hands of employees, altering their day-to-day experiences of the company that pays their wages. Think of wearable medical devices to track steps and heart rate, or find yourself wiped out by a bout of depression: instead of seeking therapy for six months and seeing a psychiatrist once a week, try an app that offers eight weeks of mental-health assistance.
Wearable Devices and Data-Driven Insights: Tracking Activity and Personalizing Wellness
Personal wearable devices such as fitness trackers and smartwatches are growing in popularity as tools for corporate wellness initiatives; they measure steps taken in a day, sleep patterns at night, and resting heart rate. These devices go beyond counting steps; they can monitor sleep quality, resting heart rate, and even stress levels. This data empowers employees to take a more proactive approach to their health, potentially leading to a healthier, happier, and more productive workforce.
Benefits of Wearable Tech:**
Personal fitness Goals: By tracking movements and allocations using algorithms, the freedom to workout becomes a personalized fitness goal, track-able both individually and corporately. Higher activity levels: Some wearable apps introduce a competitive element with games and leaderboards or gamification that one analyst likened to a nuclear arms race, which can activate employees to move more through the course of the day. Valuable data insights about overall employee health trends from which employers can craft targeted wellness programmes.
Privacy Concerns and Data Ownership:**
Although wearable technology has many advantages in the workplace, before any company implements any type of program using wearable technology, it should have a clear policy about not just data ownership but the collection, storage and use of employee data. If workers are able to understand the purpose of the program and trust that their data and privacy are treated with respect, then this type of technology could soon become the new normal. Learn more about the benefits and factors to consider for a wearable technology program in your workplace by reading our blog post “Wearable technology in the workplace: Benefits and considerations”.
Telehealth and Mental Health Support: Convenience and Accessibility
Telehealth services are expanding access to care. In particular, offering online therapy sessions with fully licensed mental health practitioners is a great way to help employers provide employees with quick, convenient and private ways to address mental health matters.
The Rise of Online Therapy:
Minimises Stigma: Online delivery also minimizes the stigma associated with seeking treatment for mental health difficulties by reassuring employees that using Biofeedback to improve their well being can be done with discretion. Increased Accessibility: Telepsych reduces geographic barriers of care so that employees who might work onsite in remote locations can still access quality mental health services. Flexible Scheduling: Online appointments give employees greater flexibility in their schedules for appointments to facilitate mental health care in the midst of a busy week. Learn ways to use telehealth for employee wellbeing in our blog post ‘Leveraging telehealth for employee wellbeing: Mental health needs’. H2 A World of Wellness Apps: Tools for a Healthier Lifestyle The vast corporate wellness industry can embrace this view of wellbeing thanks to the wide range of health and wellness apps available in the app market, from ones that help reduce stress through mindfulness meditation, to apps that explain good eating habits and proper sleep hygiene. There’s an app for just about everything within the widely broad view of health and wellbeing.
Considerations for Implementing Wellness Apps:**
Diversity and Flexibility: Provide different apps to meet your employees’ variety of needs and preferences. Easy-to-Use Interface: The apps must be easy to use and integrated in a user-friendly way to existing corporate platforms. Ongoing Support: Offer employees resources for using the selected wellness apps and continual support. For examples of wellness apps to support employee wellness, read our post ‘The best wellness apps to promote employee well-being’
Building a Culture of Technology-Enabled Wellness
If companies really want employees to use the latest wellness technology, they need to build a culture that embraces that use. Design it for User Experience: For example, make the interface more user-friendly, or offer stronger instructions and tutorials for employees using the technology. Data Security: Privacy and strong data security to safeguard employee data. Ongoing Communication: Communicate the value proposition of wellbeing tech to drive interest in using these tools. Invite employees to explore the digital programmes and tools available to them as resources.
The Future of Workplace Wellness Technology: AI and Personalized Wellness
This simply shows that the future of workplace wellness technology could provide true wellness experiences, by further personalizing recommended action with artificial intelligence, offering employees individualized wellness feedback in real-time, and thankfully scuttling once and for all the discriminatory and inhumane approach that diet helicopters represent. But ethics must be taken into account when AI is introduced into the workplace wellbeing space, too: assuring employees that their data is treated with transparency and that their AI recommendations are not unduly biased will be crucial here. On a lithograph depicting a steam-powered silk mill in the early 19th century, the engineer Claude François Baptiste Crozet foregrounds an Oberlin weaving machine, while worker safety measures are clearly visible in the background. This approach has far-reaching benefits: technology and human resources should be used in harmony to create a dynamic workforce that thrives in a culture that is happy, healthy and sociable.
