The enhancement and trialling of an innovative platform to improve SMEs' ability to provide occupational health services to their workforce and measure improved performance in the workplace

COVID-19 brought into sharp relief the importance of employees' health and wellbeing at work, both physical and mental; and radically transformed the nature of work. Many larger employers have attempted to address this through the development of wellness programmes for their staff. These have largely focused, however, on mental wellbeing, rather than broader occupational health; and have not kept pace with the needs of employees in a hybrid working environment. Most SMEs and self-employed professionals do not have the resources to commit to bespoke occupational health provision.

During the first phase of this project, Wellics successfully created and incorporated cutting-edge sensors capable of monitoring multiple elements within the workplace. These sensors are designed to track air quality, temperature, and noise levels, empowering businesses to implement data-driven approaches that optimise their work environments. As a result, employee health and productivity have seen significant improvements. Additionally, the integration of an artificial intelligence--based module for mental health and mood evaluation has proven invaluable, equipping users with essential insights into their psychological wellbeing and enabling timely intervention and support.

In the second phase, we now plan to demonstrate the concrete advantages of our platform to a wider audience. We plan to develop personalised challenges and competitive league-type challenges to embed wellness in corporate activities and encourage regular engagement, using strategies found in popular apps such as Duolingo, with 37 million active monthly users. This unique strategy aims not only to improve user interaction but also to cultivate a workplace environment that prioritises health and wellness. Additionally, Wellics intends to create an algorithm that connects wellbeing to workplace performance. This valuable tool will offer SMEs, small businesses, and independent contractors valuable insights into the impact of occupational health on business productivity and efficiency and allow users to measure the return on their investment in the services and steps taken to address workplace wellbeing more generally.

We have selected three complementary organisations at which to demonstrate our Phase 2 service: Kapitalise, a typical digital SME; Be-Safe Technologies, an OH provider; and Regus, an office provider with thousands of SME tenants. These diverse organisations will give us a representative sample of the main types of customer we plan to target in the first years of commercialisation. This evaluation will contribute to the existing body of research in this field and will help inform the decisions of relevant government bodies, e.g., DWP, a potential public-sector trial site.