Abstract
Introduction
It is estimated that we spend an average of one hundred thousand hours at work, and while meaningful work can promote good well-being and mental health, over 15% of people in work experience symptoms indicative of a mental health condition. In 2019 to 2020, 17.9 million working days were lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in the United Kingdom. The prevalence of mental health disorders and levels of help-seeking vary amongst employees within different occupational groups and industries. Studies have highlighted the need to focus attention on tailored interventions to address different occupational groups and industry needs, and in particular studies report higher prevalence of depression within male-dominated industries.
Digital mental health interventions can support individuals, in a potentially low cost, efficient and scalable way, where those generalised from clinical settings to the workplace, primarily cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) stress-management and mindfulness-based stress reduction programs have shown promise. Tailored digital interventions could provide a way to encourage help-seeking within an Employee Assistance Programme, and provide tailored support to different industries and occupational groups.
Research Questions
In collaboration with Inspire, a mental health social enterprise, the aim of the current study is to analyse real world usage of a digital mental health intervention, the Inspire Support Hub available to employees across different sectors of the workforce.
• How do users from different industry sectors engage with the digital employee wellbeing hub?
• Is the user retention different across the various industry sectors?
• What temporal patterns exist amongst employee engagement with the digital employee wellbeing hub?
• Do users from different industry sectors have different needs in terms of psychoeducational materials and scale use?
Methodology
The Inspire Support Hub is a web-based platform developed using PHP and MySQL, containing a range of self-help tools. Interactions with the Inspire Support Hub are recorded as anonymous events, including clicks, mood tracks, self-assessment results, with a unique user ID and timestamp. Upon sign up, the user utilises a company pin and their sector is recorded. R studio was used to analyse the event logs collected. R packages dplyr and tidyverse were used for data cleaning and wrangling, and ggplot2 for data visualisation. The techniques used to analyse the data include: frequency usage analysis, time series analysis, user archetype discovery, retention/survival analysis.
Results
The platform’s event logs were analysed between February 2019 and June 2022. During this timeframe several hundred client companies were set up on the platform, across 13 sectors, with 9040 users registering, and 104,621 events were logged.
Conclusions
Results from this analysis demonstrate how a digital mental health intervention is used in a real-world setting, across different workplace sectors. These results show how users interact with the same system in different ways, offering actionable insights to provide a more personalised user journey, to improve user experience.
It is estimated that we spend an average of one hundred thousand hours at work, and while meaningful work can promote good well-being and mental health, over 15% of people in work experience symptoms indicative of a mental health condition. In 2019 to 2020, 17.9 million working days were lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in the United Kingdom. The prevalence of mental health disorders and levels of help-seeking vary amongst employees within different occupational groups and industries. Studies have highlighted the need to focus attention on tailored interventions to address different occupational groups and industry needs, and in particular studies report higher prevalence of depression within male-dominated industries.
Digital mental health interventions can support individuals, in a potentially low cost, efficient and scalable way, where those generalised from clinical settings to the workplace, primarily cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) stress-management and mindfulness-based stress reduction programs have shown promise. Tailored digital interventions could provide a way to encourage help-seeking within an Employee Assistance Programme, and provide tailored support to different industries and occupational groups.
Research Questions
In collaboration with Inspire, a mental health social enterprise, the aim of the current study is to analyse real world usage of a digital mental health intervention, the Inspire Support Hub available to employees across different sectors of the workforce.
• How do users from different industry sectors engage with the digital employee wellbeing hub?
• Is the user retention different across the various industry sectors?
• What temporal patterns exist amongst employee engagement with the digital employee wellbeing hub?
• Do users from different industry sectors have different needs in terms of psychoeducational materials and scale use?
Methodology
The Inspire Support Hub is a web-based platform developed using PHP and MySQL, containing a range of self-help tools. Interactions with the Inspire Support Hub are recorded as anonymous events, including clicks, mood tracks, self-assessment results, with a unique user ID and timestamp. Upon sign up, the user utilises a company pin and their sector is recorded. R studio was used to analyse the event logs collected. R packages dplyr and tidyverse were used for data cleaning and wrangling, and ggplot2 for data visualisation. The techniques used to analyse the data include: frequency usage analysis, time series analysis, user archetype discovery, retention/survival analysis.
Results
The platform’s event logs were analysed between February 2019 and June 2022. During this timeframe several hundred client companies were set up on the platform, across 13 sectors, with 9040 users registering, and 104,621 events were logged.
Conclusions
Results from this analysis demonstrate how a digital mental health intervention is used in a real-world setting, across different workplace sectors. These results show how users interact with the same system in different ways, offering actionable insights to provide a more personalised user journey, to improve user experience.
Original language | English |
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Pages | 36-37 |
Publication status | Published (in print/issue) - 4 Jul 2023 |
Event | International Digital Mental Health & Wellbeing Conference - Ulster University, Belfast, United Kingdom Duration: 21 Jun 2023 → 23 Jun 2023 Conference number: 1 https://www.ulster.ac.uk/faculties/computing-engineering-and-the-built-environment/events/1st-international-digital-mental-health-and-wellbeing-conference |
Conference
Conference | International Digital Mental Health & Wellbeing Conference |
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Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
City | Belfast |
Period | 21/06/23 → 23/06/23 |
Internet address |
Keywords
- Workplace wellbeing
- digital mental health