Abstract:

The workplace is an important setting for raising awareness of public health issues and delivering interventions to promote health and wellbeing of working-age adults. The role of employers in supporting the physical and mental health of their employees is emphasised in national and international policy and guidelines. Web-based interventions are increasingly being used in occupational settings across a range of health areas for education and training, skills development, and behaviour change. These interventions may be targeted at employees, managers, or both, and have shown promise for effecting positive changes at an individual and organisational level. Here, we report a two-stage public engagement process in which we:
(a) reflected on the design and implementation of 6 web-based interventions published between 2020-2023 as ‘case studies’, to generate a framework of key challenges and facilitators for contemporary web-based research, and;
(b) engaged in stakeholder consultation to discuss, refine, and agree key considerations.

The case studies were all digital workplace interventions, developed using collaborative-participatory design approaches and using Agile or ASPIRE methodologies. Cases 1 and 2 focus on workforce education and/or skills training. Case 1 is “Alcohol Prevention in Urgent and Emergency Care” (APUEC) training to increase positive attitudes, knowledge, confidence, and skills related to alcohol screening, brief intervention and referral for treatment. Case 2 is “Mitigating the Psychological Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Workers”, an e-package including evidence-based guidance, support and signposting relating to psychological wellbeing for healthcare employees. Cases 3 and 4 focus on the line manager education and/or skills training. Case 3 is “Managing Minds at Work” providing line managers with the skills to actively support mental health at work. Case 4 is the “Test@Work Digital Toolkit” providing guidance and support for employers around health checks and opt-in HIV testing in the workplace. Case 5, focused on health protection, is “Covid-19 Vaccine Education (CoVE)”, aiming to support health and care professionals in promoting COVID-19 vaccination and booster vaccination uptake. Finally, Case 6, focused on the self-management of a chronic condition, is the “Pain-at-Work (PAW) Toolkit, aiming to increase knowledge about employee rights and how to access support for people living and working with chronic pain.

The stakeholder consultation (n=30) was conducted as part of a masterclass on ‘Workplace Health’ (n=18) and one-to-one approach (n=12) involving line managers, employees, healthcare professionals and health researchers. Our professional learning and public engagement activity raised key advantages and challenges of web-based interventions for training and health behaviour change. This activity generated the WWHIDE Framework (A Web-based Workforce Health Intervention Development and Evaluation Framework) which presents key considerations around the recruitment of employers and employees, intervention design and development, delivery modality, comparison groups for trials, intervention engagement, attrition rates, and user acceptance. These insights will inform the design of future health research studies involving web-based interventions for education, training, and behaviour change.

Keywords:

Digital, Web-Based, Intervention, Training, Workforce.