From Monitoring to Assisting: A Systematic Review towards Healthier Workplaces

Abstract

Long-term stress is associated with a decline in global health, affecting social, intellectual, and economic development alike. Although comprehensive action plans have been implemented to provide people access to mental health services and promote mental well-being, employees’ mental health generally takes second place to productivity and profit in business settings. This review paper offers an overview of the current interactive approaches used for relieving work-related stress associated with mental health. Results from the 38 included studies show that affective computing is used mainly for monitoring purposes and is usually combined with tangible interfaces that collect workers’ physiological changes. Although the ability to sense and predict employees’ affective states can potentially improve mental health in the workplace, there is a substantial disparity between monitoring one’s health and the delivery of practical interventions to mitigate stress found in the surveyed studies. Designing systems that capitalize on embodied interaction principles is paramount, especially in the post-pandemic context, as the concepts of physical and mental safety take on new meanings that must be consciously and carefully addressed, particularly in workplace settings. Finally, this paper highlights the main design implications for the effective implementation of interfaces to help mitigate stress in the workplace.