Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SmartWork (Smart Age-friendly Living and Working Environment)
Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2022-03-31
Ageing is a gradual process and there is no definition of when someone becomes an “older worker”, but many physical changes associated with ageing including decline in vision, hearing and psychomotor coordination are estimated to start as early as the age of 50. Furthermore, health chronic conditions prevalence in case of people aged 50+ is very high, with every second person having hypertension and/or some other chronic disease (e.g. high cholesterol, heart disease, mental illness, diabetes, arthritis, back problems, asthma, COPD, etc.), and multimorbidity being very common among people aged 65+ (prevalence rates estimated as high as 65%). It is worth noting that ill health incapacity is a major cause of labour market exit before the age of 60. On the other side, except of work-specific skills and knowledge, other valuable functions and transferable skills improve with age, including strategic thinking, sharp-wittedness, consideration, wisdom, ability to deliberate, ability to rationalise, language skills, and holistic perception, thus overall the longer work experience having the potential to compensate for the decline of some basic cognitive processes (e.g. memory functions) and psychomotor skills if adequately exploited at the workplace.
SmartWork builds a worker-centric AI system for work ability sustainability, integrating unobtrusive sensing and modelling of the worker state with a suite of novel services for context and worker-aware adaptive work support. The project combines the unobtrusive monitoring of health, cognitive and emotional status of the worker, through the deployment of a corresponding sensing infrastructure (IPN mouse, wearables, work-environment sensors), with the a set of AI-enhanced applications, enabling the effective management of everyday tasks, the efficient management of resources and the improved collaboration and interaction between employees and employers. Placing the older employees at its center, the project aims to support their healthy ageing, while maintaining them active and productive at their working environment. This is performed by adopting a holistic approach that considers the attitudes and abilities of the ageing worker and enables decision support for personalized interventions for maintenance of the work ability, towards the creation of an adaptive working environment supports the older office worker with optimized services for on-the-fly work flexibility coordination, seamless transfer of the work environment between different devices and different environments (home, office, on the move), and on-demand personalized training.
SmartWork builds its value proposition on four key objectives (O) found in two major categories, namely: (O1) Worker-Centric AI System for Work Ability Sustainability; (O2) Unobtrusive sensing and modelling of worker state; (O3) Novel SmartWork Services Suite for the Context and Worker-Aware Adaptive Work Support; and (O4) Co-create and evaluate the SmartWork system with the active engagement of the end users in real world settings, with special attention to ethics, privacy and security.
SmartWork builds a worker-centric AI system for work ability sustainability, integrating unobtrusive sensing and modelling of the worker state with a suite of novel services for context and worker-aware adaptive work support. The project combines the unobtrusive monitoring of health, cognitive and emotional status of the worker, through the deployment of a corresponding sensing infrastructure (IPN mouse, wearables, work-environment sensors), with the a set of AI-enhanced applications, enabling the effective management of everyday tasks, the efficient management of resources and the improved collaboration and interaction between employees and employers. Placing the older employees at its center, the project aims to support their healthy ageing, while maintaining them active and productive at their working environment. This is performed by adopting a holistic approach that considers the attitudes and abilities of the ageing worker and enables decision support for personalized interventions for maintenance of the work ability, towards the creation of an adaptive working environment supports the older office worker with optimized services for on-the-fly work flexibility coordination, seamless transfer of the work environment between different devices and different environments (home, office, on the move), and on-demand personalized training.
SmartWork builds its value proposition on four key objectives (O) found in two major categories, namely: (O1) Worker-Centric AI System for Work Ability Sustainability; (O2) Unobtrusive sensing and modelling of worker state; (O3) Novel SmartWork Services Suite for the Context and Worker-Aware Adaptive Work Support; and (O4) Co-create and evaluate the SmartWork system with the active engagement of the end users in real world settings, with special attention to ethics, privacy and security.
The main outcomes of the project are summarized below:
• Implemented an unobtrusive sensing infrastructure, combined with low-level processing capabilities, enabling the monitory of workers bio-signals as well as workplace parameters.
• Designed, developed and trained a set of AI-driven algorithms that explore the data wealth of the project, towards personalized support and recommendations, regarding both health and work management aspects.
• Incorporated various accessibility features, enabling the personalization and customization of the digital working environment.
• Integrated third-party tools enabling the provision of efficient work-management and training features to the older workers and their managers.
• Released a set of services integrating all the above and validated them in real-world settings in two countries (Denmark and Portugal).
SmartWork is the outcome of participatory user-centric design, through the structured involvement of the targeted users in all aspects of the project (from design and development to integration and pilots’ execution), in an effort to optimally reflect their needs. All project’s activities were combined with raising awareness actions, placing SmartWork under a broader scope, also addressing the new workplace conditions/settings/challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the future exploitation of the project’s outcomes remained a central element throughout the SmartWork duration, producing the necessary guiding documents for a sustainable mid-term commercialization. In specific, during the lifetime of the project, an audience of more 11.000 SmartWork stakeholders was appraoched, while at least 4 out of the set of the project's identified exploitable outcomes can reach the market in less than six months after the end of the project.
• Implemented an unobtrusive sensing infrastructure, combined with low-level processing capabilities, enabling the monitory of workers bio-signals as well as workplace parameters.
• Designed, developed and trained a set of AI-driven algorithms that explore the data wealth of the project, towards personalized support and recommendations, regarding both health and work management aspects.
• Incorporated various accessibility features, enabling the personalization and customization of the digital working environment.
• Integrated third-party tools enabling the provision of efficient work-management and training features to the older workers and their managers.
• Released a set of services integrating all the above and validated them in real-world settings in two countries (Denmark and Portugal).
SmartWork is the outcome of participatory user-centric design, through the structured involvement of the targeted users in all aspects of the project (from design and development to integration and pilots’ execution), in an effort to optimally reflect their needs. All project’s activities were combined with raising awareness actions, placing SmartWork under a broader scope, also addressing the new workplace conditions/settings/challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the future exploitation of the project’s outcomes remained a central element throughout the SmartWork duration, producing the necessary guiding documents for a sustainable mid-term commercialization. In specific, during the lifetime of the project, an audience of more 11.000 SmartWork stakeholders was appraoched, while at least 4 out of the set of the project's identified exploitable outcomes can reach the market in less than six months after the end of the project.
After 39 months, SmartWork was completed. Overall, the project achieved its high-level and specific objectives, creating an indicative paradigm on how older workers can be supported and enhance their working life, as well as how to build thriving workplaces by adopting technology driven solutions. The technological results of the project and their application in real-world settings, proved to be very promising, paving the way for the mid-term exploitation of the project’s results as well for future research initiatives to expand the results and introduce innovations that further promote workplace wellness and support the ageing workforce.
Overall, SMARTWORK activities and their results, along with technical outcomes, further enhanced our view, on the strong potential that SmartWork-like solutions have for supporting the ageing employees and shaping the workplaces of the future. Regarding the expected impact KPIs, the project performed all steps towards the right direction in order to prove the feasibility of these metrics. The outcomes of the validation phase, indicated very promising results in terms of acceptance, usability and confidence of using the system, showing that the defined indicators are realistic and achievable. However, in order to reach these numbers, the following aspects were highlighted:
• The need for further assessment and performance of larger validation studies, including more participants and of longer duration.
• Τhe importance of training that will maximize the impact of the suggested technology driven interventions, enhancing their role and generating the necessary context, linked with established workers’ routines.
• The barriers that needed to be tackled towards the large adoption of SmartWork and similar solutions.
All the above, should be the basis for a roadmap driving all future activities, in order to achieve the defined impact and fully exploit the outcomes of the project. As users’ acceptance and participation are key to this success, the future initiatives are strongly encouraged to continue the co-design and user centric approach applied during the project. This will contribute to lowering the barriers towards ICT, enhanced users’ understanding and consequently increase the reception (and fully highlight the benefits) of such interventions. Towards this direction, a horizon of 2-3 years is considered a realistic timeframe, not only for achieving these goals, but also for successful commercialization of the produced services.
Overall, SMARTWORK activities and their results, along with technical outcomes, further enhanced our view, on the strong potential that SmartWork-like solutions have for supporting the ageing employees and shaping the workplaces of the future. Regarding the expected impact KPIs, the project performed all steps towards the right direction in order to prove the feasibility of these metrics. The outcomes of the validation phase, indicated very promising results in terms of acceptance, usability and confidence of using the system, showing that the defined indicators are realistic and achievable. However, in order to reach these numbers, the following aspects were highlighted:
• The need for further assessment and performance of larger validation studies, including more participants and of longer duration.
• Τhe importance of training that will maximize the impact of the suggested technology driven interventions, enhancing their role and generating the necessary context, linked with established workers’ routines.
• The barriers that needed to be tackled towards the large adoption of SmartWork and similar solutions.
All the above, should be the basis for a roadmap driving all future activities, in order to achieve the defined impact and fully exploit the outcomes of the project. As users’ acceptance and participation are key to this success, the future initiatives are strongly encouraged to continue the co-design and user centric approach applied during the project. This will contribute to lowering the barriers towards ICT, enhanced users’ understanding and consequently increase the reception (and fully highlight the benefits) of such interventions. Towards this direction, a horizon of 2-3 years is considered a realistic timeframe, not only for achieving these goals, but also for successful commercialization of the produced services.