Purpose: Contact centres have been described as ‘constrained’ work environments with rigid organisational and environmental structures, where staff members may experience limited autonomy over their working practices. Organisational pressures to maintain high levels of productivity and meet targets often work against investment into health and physical activity programmes within some contact centres. To maximise effectiveness and sustainability, it is essential that to consider these cultural, contextual and system factors while developing health promoting interventions for this sector. Stand Up for Health (SUH) is a workplace intervention developed to target sedentary behaviour in contact centres. In this symposia, we will examine the development and implementation of the SUH intervention, and the significance of culture, context and systems in this process.

​Methods:

Development: The 6SQuID model was used to develop the intervention. This included working closely with a pilot contact centre to understand the problem as well as identify cultural and organisational factors to be considered during intervention development; identifying modifiable factors and developing a theory of change.

Implementation: A feasibility study is underway to test the acceptability and feasibility of implementing the Stand Up for Health intervention in contact centres. Eleven contact centres have been enrolled in the study. The centres are diverse with respect to culture (private and public ownership), contexts (size of centre, geographical locations), and systems (shift patterns, layout).

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Results: The SUH intervention has been developed with due consideration given to complex, interacting elements within a contact centre. Over the course of development and delivery, a number of programme components have been identified that have enabled effective implementation and sustainability of the intervention: (i) Coproduction (ii) Fidelity to theories of change rather than activities that catalyse change (iii) Ownership (iv) Importance of organisational change (v) Communication.

Conclusion: The SUH programme highlights the importance of cultural, contextual and systemic factors for successful implementation and sustainability of interventions. It is a seminal case study illustrating the consideration of these factors in the development of any health promoting interventions for the workplace.

Purpose

The objective of this session is to describe how research can be translated into practice by describing a process of implementation and scale-up of physical activity, sedentary, and behavioral nutrition interventions for hundreds of worksites across Kansas, a rural state in the United States.

Methods

WorkWell KS has a 10-year history of developing and implementing evidence-based participatory interventions, resulting in four iterations: Phases I through III and Pathways to a Healthy Kansas.  For each iteration, we identified evidence from research regarding strategies that improve physical activity, sedentary, and behavioral nutrition in worksites. These intervention strategies were implemented, evaluated, and updated based on data about the interventions’ reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance (RE-AIM).

Results

A total of 816 worksites and 2,983 worksite contacts have completed at least one iteration of WorkWell KS. Implemented worksite changes impacted up to 211,865 employees and another 245,618 dependents. Effectiveness, adoption, and maintenance of the interventions were assessed through standardized employee-level assessments (at baseline and one-year follow-up), WorkWell KS assessments developed to measure evidence-based practices (at baseline and one-year follow-up), and participant feedback (at baseline, post-workshop, and one-year follow-up). As the same individual facilitated all WorkWell KS workshops and curricula, fidelity to the protocol was strong.

Conclusions

Worksite wellness research can be translated into practice by establishing and evaluating processes and systems using the RE-AIM framework, expanding worksites’ capacity through participatory processes, and emphasizing organizational-level changes.

Purpose: The implementation of interventions targeting sedentary office workers at scale is a major challenge. Digital based interventions have the potential to reach large populations at a low cost.  With limited resources, partnerships with industry stakeholders in workplace health should be considered to design sustainable interventions. Drawing on implementation science, and using a “research/industry” co-production case study, this presentation will explore the development, and implementation of a digital workplace health application targeting sedentary office workers. Specifically, the presentation will:

1)      Explain the process of working with industry to co-produce and pilot test for both effectiveness and scalability.  

2)      Outline the journey and lessons learned from co-production.

Methods: A co-production approach between a business and academics was followed to develop a workplace digital health application targeting several health behaviours using a nudge based technology. Co-production of the content of the application was conducted in a three step process of: 1) hypothesis validation; 2) content validation, creation, and analysis; and 3) product testing. Subsequent to this, a second pilot phase was initiated to test the products effectiveness and scalability in four real-world office settings. To inform scalability, the RE-AIM QuEST mixed methods framework was utilised evaluating the intervention across additional indicators.

Results: Preliminary results indicate that, introducing a pilot testing phase specific to scalability has informed the research teams understanding of the potential for scale-up at an early phase of the research process. Based on the co-production process the research team learned valuable lessons about working with a start-up company and specific recommendations for researchers to employ, will be shared. 

Conclusion: The co-production of sustainable interventions with industry stakeholders may be an important way forward to reducing sedentary behaviour in large populations of office workers. Understanding the challenges of working with stakeholders has the potential to foster the mutually beneficial relationship needed for success.