Mobile applications for well-being promotion and stress management at the workplace: facilitators and barriers

In the last decades, the workplace has been going through several challenges. Between them, we can find the need to improve the attention to promoting employee health and well-being. Indeed, mental health is one of the major concerns in the workplace and is considered a worldwide public health priority (Raggi et al., 2024). Work-related stress has become one of the significant problems in work contexts and is associated with increased physical and mental risks (Moe-Byrne et al., 2022). About half of the European workers report stress and psychosocial risks as a common phenomenon in the workplace. Therefore, addressing work stress by promoting mental well-being at the workplace might improve work functioning (van der Feltz-Cornelis et al., 2023). For several years, organizations have been looking for new approaches to promote worker well-being. Face-to-face interventions have not always seemed effective or helpful. Therefore, the advancement of digital technology has led to the creation of digital interventions for physical and mental health. Nowadays, web-based and smartphone-based digital health interventions have become increasingly popular due to their easy implementation, scalability and accessibility, and well-being apps are among the most downloaded apps (Torous et al., 2020; Krebs and Duncan, 2015). Several studies have evaluated the effectiveness of apps with positive results. It seems that interventions developed through technologies can effectively promote well-being and reduce stress in the workplace context, decreasing the stigma still related to mental health and increasing peer support strategies. Digital interventions, however, tend to have high attrition rates (van der Feltz-Cornelis et al., 2023), and despite the accessibility and supporting evidence of apps, research studies and implementation efforts demonstrate the difficulties of realizing the potential of digital mental health. High dropout rates and lack of engagement with apps are two widely acknowledged barriers, although the mechanisms and reasons for such remain unclear. Indeed, there are many other potential causes, ranging from lack of perceived value to technological privacy concerns (Torous et al., 2020). Therefore, although many studies are interested in using technology for preventive purposes in the workplace, there are still many gaps to be filled relating to identifying facilitators and barriers involved in using mobile-based interventions to decrease stress and improve well-being. To this end, we conducted five in-person focus groups with twenty-nine participants. The participants were workers of different ages and genders who voluntarily participated in the meetings. The aim was to investigate what kind of self-help interventions are expected by users, what would reduce the dropout of interventions, and what users expect from technology; in the end, clarify the role of technology acceptance, which is often neglected but could influence the intention to use mobile app interventions and impact their effectiveness in promoting well-being and stress management. This research is ongoing, and we expect to analyze data through a thematic analysis with Nvivo software. The motivations for using technology to promote well-being will be investigated, as well as differences by gender and age concerning the propensity for this type of intervention.