Towards Healthy Office Environments: A worker-centric Internet of Things Approach

Abstract

Health promotion in the workplace is one of the main challenges that the World Health Organization (WHO) has set in its agenda for the 21st century. Motivated by this concern, many companies have reacted launching awareness campaigns and wellness promotion programs that often encounter lack of adherence or follow-up by the target audience. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the emerging paradigm of the Internet of Things (IoT) can play a mediating role between the campaign's proposers and the employees to increase their motivation to stick and prevent early dropouts. Hence, this PhD work presents a participatory worker-centric concept for enhancing individuals' wellbeing in office environments. The approach seeks to stress the importance of empowering workers to control their own wellbeing and self-care, turning work environments into succeeding confident settings to persuade and motivate end-users to attain health related changes in the mid and long-term.