Guest blog by Carl Wells PhD
Occupational health is highly beneficial for the wellness of a workforce, from ensuring physical capability and safety to maintaining and enhancing good mental health. OH is preventative and reactive - providing a platform from which employees can thrive. Yet, the implementation of preventative OH can be a challenge across large and varied workforces.
Successfully undertaking preventative OH requires time, expertise, and appropriate facilities. It needs flexibility to meet an individual’s work life balance and quality assured support that aligns with work-based interventions.
One viable option is the provision of remote or digitalised preventative health support via an App based coaching platform. Recent advancements in technology now make it possible for expert practitioners to provide holistic and personalised preventative support across exercise, nutrition, and mental wellbeing. The benefits of this approach for the employee include:
- Flexibility to access support when it works for them.
- Increased accountability by the tracking of workouts and integration to drive successful outcomes.
- Gamification and progression features to improve engagement and feedback.
It is also important to note that the employer or occupational health provider my also benefit from utilising such a model due to:
- Efficiency savings relating to cost and time as the support is remote in nature.
- The ability to measure intervention impact via the collation of progress and engagement metrics.
- Providing an additional layer of support that compliments in-person / on-site interventions.
- A feeling of community between employees.
But where is the evidence to suggest such an approach that would be effective? I am a firm believer in learning from different industries. Best practice can often be taken from one environment or context and if adapted appropriately, successfully applied to another. With reference to preventative health and wellbeing, elite sport has over recent years utilised digital platforms to provide multi-disciplinary support to athletes. Take a Premier League football player for example, they have a strength coach, dietician, and sports psychologist at their disposal so that their every wellness and performance need is not only met but optimised. And when players are travelling for European club and national team fixtures, much of the support and tracking of physical status is managed using app technology. Interestingly, if we compare the Premier League Footballer with a “Corporate athlete,” a number of similarities become apparent if health and wellness is to be maintained, just a few include:
- Extensive travel.
- Pressure to perform.
- The need for good sleep and nutrition.
A further similarity between elite sport and work / corporate settings is the need to efficiently apply health and wellness interventions to large numbers of individuals. A key facilitator of such support within elite sport is the use of digital app-based platforms, due not only to the flexibility and cost savings mentioned previously, but also the capability of such applications to house and centralise large numbers of individual profiles and records. Consequently, a relatively small number of practitioners can programme for and contact sizable numbers of people in an extremely time efficient manner. Such an approach strongly supports my philosophy that within an organisation, such health and wellness support is made available to all employees. We should take the learnings from the elite and apply to all!
In summary, on-site and in-person preventative OH and health and wellbeing support will always be necessary, due to the practicalities and complexities of many people’s needs. But it now feels like there are definite advancements to be made via the application of digital coaching in how high-level and impactful holistic preventative support can be provided to help better meet the needs of all involved.
Carl Wells PhD is Head of Product and Performance, joining P3RFORM in 2023 following twenty years as a sport and exercise scientist with professional football. Carl is passionate about applying his experiences from high performing environments to enhance the effectiveness of preventative health and fitness services delivered to individuals and organisations.