Increased use of mental and emotional health apps: what can companies do to strengthen their culture of well-being?

June
8, 2021

4 min read

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Breathing is so simple , so everyday, and yet we seem to forget it in our day-to-day lives. When someone asks us for advice because he ventures to try a new exercise, try a recreational activity that he had never done, make a presentation to a full audience, the advice that comes to us immediately is “breathe”, because that’s how we oxygenate it. that allows us to focus, concentrate.

However, in these first three months, it seems that we have put it aside. It is no coincidence that the average use of mental and emotional health applications has grown by 54% in the period January to April in 2021, in relation to the use of apps in the fourth quarter of the previous year, in the region comprised by Spanish-speaking countries from Latin America plus Brazil.

According to records we have carried out in Gympass , if we compare the average use of mental and emotional health apps for the first quarter of 2021 against the average use of the previous year, the global increase is 130%, a sign of the need we have for a more comprehensive wellness approach.

We have seen an evolution of what we understand by wellness and how it is carried out in the workplace. We do not perceive the home office the same today as 14 months ago, and everything lies in a basic concept: 14 months ago, companies could offer it as an alternative in which employees chose to physically attend the office or not. Six months ago, the only alternative for many companies was exclusively remote work. This feeling can be key to understanding fatigue syndrome, constant exposure to screens and the feeling that work hours overlap.

This feeling is transversal in all organizations. All teams, regardless of their level in the organization, in all departments that comprise it, are likely to already suffer from symptoms of anxiety, fatigue or insomnia. However, one of the barriers is also likely to be how to obtain resources to improve personal well-being.

Undoubtedly, one option is to offer tools that in a single platform where there is access – confidentially – to different activities, applications or services and thus obtain the necessary resources to advance in the adoption of well-being habits, which can be from focusing on breathing with meditation, yoga, even expert advice on specific aspects of emotional health or other activities such as sports or food care.

We have been in a new normal for six months that will gradually be adjusted, to the extent that we can resume certain activities. It is an opportunity that business and company leaders, as well as Human Resources professionals, should take to give themselves a break that allows them to establish priorities and manage the necessary actions to establish solid foundations of well-being in their work teams, because It will be one of the fundamental aspects to take care of in the coming months, after such a long period of uncertainty.

So we enter a new stage, where we begin to recover spaces and solve new challenges. So let’s not forget our own advice: let’s breathe.