On their mission to “beat stress at work” Soma has made great progress in developing its stress prevention and management solution further and validating the solution in the largest of its kind randomised controlled trial - while creating a community of health, wellbeing and HR innovators, thought leaders and policy stakeholders.
Users benefit from a new and more user-friendly interface, increased usability, improved accuracy for the stress detection feature and an improved daily session journey resulting in a more engaging user experience that now also crosses over to the web.
Organisations benefit from extended analytics capabilities using the latest business intelligence software as well as new security and privacy features in the light of the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This new and improved solution has been validated in the largest randomised controlled trial (RCT) to date examining the effectiveness of a smartphone-based solution to manage and prevent stress and promote good mental health at work. In a naturalistic setting Soma’s solution was effective in reducing stress, improving wellbeing, increasing resilience and decreasing sleeping troubles relative to waitlist control.
The solution has also impacted hard business outcome measures. HSCNI BSO saw a decrease of 5,000 hours in mental health related absence since the introduction of Soma’s app, compared to the year before.
It takes two to successfully prevent stress and mental ill-health in the workplace – a new solution and innovative early adopters. Soma has gathered an HR innovators’ network comprising some of the most advanced and forward-thinking companies and organisations in the area of employee health and wellbeing. We have engaged with early adopters, thought leaders and policy stakeholders on different levels:
• Our series of HR innovator networking events featured distinguished experts such as Dr David Cox, Prof Adrian Williams, Dr Nerina Ramlakhan, Tom Beaumont, Karl Simons, David Beeney, Geoff McDonald, Heather Kelly, Juliet Adams, Dr Patrick Jordan and the event was rated 9.4 out of 10 for highly likely to recommend the event.
• For our new “Innovation in Health & Wellbeing” video webinar series we invited established thought leaders in applied mindfulness, sports psychology, happiness, acceptance and commitment therapy, emotions at work, corporate social responsibility, experts from the Health and Safety Executive and policy makers from the UK government’s Work and Health unit.
• We participated in UK government roundtables and workshops with Lord Stevenson, Paul Farmer (CEO Mind) and Prof Chris Whitty (UK Government Office for Science).
• We exhibited our solution at various industry events in the UK and Europe and gave key note speeches to promote awareness for mental wellbeing and health at work.
In addition we are proud to announce that this project was featured in an article in the Financial Times (“Smartphone app on track to monitor staff stress and mental health”, October 2016) and that we won the “HR Innovator 2017” award at the HR Director’s Summit in Birmingham.
In our FTSE 100 report we used the innovative methodology of semantic analysis and applied it to 20,000 pages of annual reports of FTSE 100 companies. The efforts showed that organisations that mention wellbeing in their annual reports show higher profitability. As a result Soma was featured in The Telegraph, BBC, City AM, and various online and industry publications.
