FW-HTF-P: The Future of Workplace Wellness

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Workplace wellness programs are on the rise. In a recent report by the US Chamber of Commerce, it was reported that a large majority of employers are committed to workplace wellness. Recent research shows that broad participation by employees, across the full spectrum of income levels, is a large factor for the effectiveness of workplace wellness programs. Studies have found that participation from employees on the lower end of the income distribution was low, while participation from higher income employees with good health practices was high. This suggests that workplace wellness programs shift costs onto low-income employees with high health care spending and poor health habits. In this context, to address future corporate wellness need, there is a significant opportunity for using inexpensive sensing technology, new workplace designs, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that together can deliver new solutions into employees’ workspaces, and help address the growing need for scaling wellness practices. This project envisions the future of workplace wellness as embedded, engaging, empowering, and economical -- embedded into daily routines, empowered via AI enabled insights, engaging via powerful real-time media-based feedback approaches, and made economical by a comprehensive design approach spanning sensors, algorithms, product, and industrial design. Our interdisciplinary project brings together disciplines as wide as engineering, health sciences, economics, design, and media-arts. We integrate emerging technologies like low-power sensing using wearables to develop measures of subject activity to improve personalized wellness protocols. We will develop AI methods to convert low-grade sensor data, to surrogates of clinically relevant features that correlate with health metrics. New ergonomic designs of workspaces will be developed, with wellness relevant instrumentation, aimed at reaching higher compliance with wellness recommendations. Biofeedback using real-time media-based ambient auditory and haptic-based methods will be developed for long-term joyful engagement with wellness. At the same time, wellness coaches will participate in the design and development of the technology solutions; not just to understand how they work, but to appreciate their strengths and weaknesses, and help structure their development in close collaboration with designers and technologists. Finally, we will develop new measures and metrics, including economic impacts of AI techniques on potential gains from increased productivity. The future development of our project will lead to corporate wellness programs based on experience-based knowledge of human behavior and health. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.