Promoting Psychological Well-Being at Work by Reducing Stress and Improving Sleep: Mixed-Methods Analysis

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Digital Health Interventions
• Employee Well-being Programs

Background:

• Workplace health and psychological well-being programs are increasingly common.
• Effectiveness and engagement factors for these programs are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a broad, team-based, digital health and well-being program.
• To identify program elements that reduce work stress and improve employee psychological well-being, sleep quality, and productivity.

Main Methods:

• Mixed-methods evaluation of the Virgin Pulse Global Challenge program (May-September 2016).
• Collected pre- and post-program self-reported data on stress, sleep, productivity, and well-being.
• Used random forest and weighted hierarchical linear models to address low survey response rates (48% and 10%).

Main Results:

• The program showed greater benefits for older employees; women reported higher psychological well-being improvements than men.
• Most program modules significantly improved psychological well-being (4.1%-6.0%), sleep quality (3.2%-6.9%), stress reduction (1.7%-6.8%), and productivity (1.9%-4.2%).
• Healthy lifestyle descriptions correlated positively with outcomes, while physical activity and step tracking descriptions correlated negatively.

Conclusions:

• Mixed-methods analysis provided rich data for developing employee health programs.
• Low response rates and lack of a control group are limitations, despite analytical adjustments.