Digital wellbeing programme for employees launched

A new digital wellbeing programme for employees has been launched thanks to a collaboration between University of Essex researchers and Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing Ltd.

Funded by EIRA’s Innovation Voucher scheme, the project has involved new company Keep Fit Eat Fit working with academics from the University’s School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences (SRES) and Department of Psychology, who have provided expertise in the areas of sleep science, nutrition and the effects of sedentary working on the mind and body.

Keep Fit Eat Fit, which is based at the University’s Innovation Centre, approached EIRA as it wanted professional experts to create content for some of the programme modules. EIRA is a project which supports innovation in the East of England by providing businesses with access to academic expertise.

As a result, senior lecturers Dr Valerie Gladwell and Dr Nicholas Cooper, and PhD students Achilleas Pavlou and Dawn Holford became involved in the project where academic knowledge was exchanged, giving access to reports, papers, and involved creating useful blog content and filming the academic experts talking about their specialist areas and how this innovative new platform can really impact on employee wellbeing.

The company will continue to work with Dr Gladwell and colleagues from SRES in the new year to run a three-month research programme, testing the efficacy of the office-based Keep Fit Eat Fit exercise content and measuring the effect of sedentary office behaviour on health and wellbeing.

“As a practising academic focused on how to break up sedentary work time, I am very happy to be working with Keep Fit Eat Fit on this topic. Whether working from home or in the office, keeping active is essential for workplace health and wellbeing," explained  Dr Gladwell.

The business-facing website keepfiteatfit.com offers a complete digital wellbeing programme for employers to provide to their employees and is purchased via a monthly membership subscription.

The content addresses all of the major workplace physical, mental and financial wellbeing challenges, and delivers this via scrolling video channels, audiobooks and blogs within a gamified end-user membership portal. It is a self-help tool for use throughout the whole day - wherever the user is located. For remote teams, it is an ideal and effective way of increasing employee engagement.

Angela Knox, from Keep Fit Eat Fit Wellbeing, said: “Working with EIRA on the Innovation Voucher has been a great experience and we have received tailored support for our project which has helped us to create a well-rounded product with invaluable contributions from academics within the University of Essex. As our product is a wellbeing offering, the validation, endorsement and input we now have from the academics differentiates us from anything else on the market, which was the aim when we embarked on the project.”