Improving employees’ work-related well-being and physical health through a technology-based physical activity intervention: A randomized intervention-control group study.

Abstract

Although activity trackers are becoming more popular, little is known whether this new technology qualifies to improve employees’ health. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of a workplace intervention applying activity trackers (behavioral approach) along with an online coach (cognitive approach) on work-related well-being (e.g., burnout) and physical health (e.g., body mass index). To test for intervention effects, 116 employees at risk were recruited at 1 large mobility enterprise in Germany and randomly assigned to an intervention group (n = 59) and a control group (n = 57). Intervention effects were assessed 1 month, 3 months, and 1 year after the intervention. Analyses of variance for repeated measures revealed no intervention or long-term effects on work-related well-being. In the intervention group, we found a significant increase in health perception and a significant decrease in body mass index. These effects were stable over time 3 months after the intervention for health perception and 1 year after the intervention for body mass index. Our study shows that a cognitive–behavioral intervention with activity trackers improved physical health over time but was not effective in enhancing work-related well-being.

Employee Physical Activity: A Multidisciplinary Integrative Review

“…The only stream of management physical activity research to formally measure performance criteria has been the study of physical activity interventions, although theorizing underpinning these intervention studies has been piecemeal in nature. Management physical activity intervention studies can be categorized into quasi-experimental studies (e.g., company gym members vs. nonmembers; Daley & Parfitt, 1996), comparisons of physical activity interventions against other interventions (Bruning & Frew, 1987), and randomized controlled trials of physical activity interventions (Lennefer, Lopper, Wiedemann, Hess, & Hoppe, 2020). Physical activity has been shown in these studies to benefit productivity (Gubler, Larkin, & Pierce, 2018) and reduce long-term absenteeism (Kerr & Vlaswinkel, 1995), as well as to influence correlates of performance, including stress reactions (Clark et al, 2014), somatic complaints (Patterson, Bennett, & Wiitala, 2005), and job satisfaction (Daley & Parfitt, 1996).…”

“…Three factors temper this positive view of physical activity interventions. First, postintervention benefits relevant to performance have been inconsistently observed at follow-up assessments (e.g., 1 month, 3 months, 1 year; Clark et al, 2014; Lennefer et al, 2020). Second, physical activity interventions show comparable gains to other types of wellness interventions (e.g., management skills, meditation, team awareness training; Bruning & Frew, 1987; Patterson, Bennett, & Wiitala, 2005).…”

“…Second, physical activity interventions show comparable gains to other types of wellness interventions (e.g., management skills, meditation, team awareness training; Bruning & Frew, 1987; Patterson, Bennett, & Wiitala, 2005). Third, physical activity is rarely manipulated in isolation in interventions, often being coupled with an interpersonal component (e.g., health education counseling, online coaching, team-based exercise; Atlantis, Chow, Kirby, & Singh, 2006; Lennefer et al, 2020; Ranby, MacKinnon, Fairchild, Elliot, Kuehl, & Goldberg, 2011), making it impossible to disentangle the unique effects of physical activity. Thus, methodological artifacts and intervention design characteristics have obscured knowledge of the physical activity–job performance relationship in intervention studies.…”

Self-reported health-related experiences, psychological capital, and psychological wellbeing in Lithuanian adults sample

“…As many researchers focus on health-related interventions (Baldwin et al, 2017;Fredrickson, 2000;Gick, 2011;Hilton and Johnston, 2017;Lai and Ma, 2016;Lennefer ., 2019;Luthans et al, 2006;Ryff et al, 2015;Sibulwa et al, 2019), we hope that our study at least humbly contributed to the understanding of the association between the number of diseases, psychological capital, and psychological wellbeing, and this might have an added value for health intervention planning. We hope that this research provided some empirical evidence to implement health-related PsyCap or similar interventions on a large scale as strong self-efficacy, hope and resilience proved to be beneficial for the health of people of different ages (Fredrickson, 2000;Luthans et al, 2006;Marsh et al, 2019;Ueno et al, 2020;Van Dick et al, 2017;Varas et al, 2019).…”

“…However, there is an extensive literature that links psychological wellbeing to positive health outcomes. Researchers analyzed predictors of subjective physical health and global wellbeing (Staudinger et al, 1999), cultivating positive emotions to optimize health and well-being (Fredrickson, 2000), environmental and genetic contributions to the relationship between subjective well-being, perceived health, and somatic illness (Røysamb et al, 2003), psychosocial adjustment among cancer survivors (Costanzo et al, 2009), control striving in older adults with serious health problems (Hall et al, 2010), health, happiness and wisdom (Judge et al, 2010), nonspecific mechanisms that enhance well-being in health-promoting behaviors (Gaitan-Sierra and Hyland, 2011), singing, health and wellbeing (Gick, 2011), happiness and cardiovascular health (Boehm and Kubzansky, 2012), religious behavior, wellbeing and health (Levin, 2013), persistent psychological wellbeing as predicting improved self-rated health (Ryff et al, 2015), emotions and wellbeing (Tappolet and Rossi, 2015), age differences in the within-person coupling of individuals' physical health and wellbeing (Schöllgen et al, 2016), psychological factors in health (Hilton and Johnston, 2017), defensive profile in breast cancer women (Di Giuseppe et al, 2019), improving employees wellbeing and physical health through a technology-based physical activity intervention (Lennefer et al, 2019). Julia Boehm and Laura Kubzansky reviewed over 200 published studies to explore the link between life satisfaction, happiness, and cardiovascular health.…”