JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The rapid increasing of the ageing population is pushing many national Governments to shape the retirement legislation in order to extend the older adults’ working life. Nevertheless, one of the main conditions to work longer is being healthy. Thus, carrying out health and well-being promotion and prevention interventions targeting older workers has being a prime objective of the policy agenda in the last few years. Moreover, the transition to retirement, may be a sensitive change that can entail the opportunity of a new life as well as psychological, social and financial difficulties. Recently, computer-based and digital health interventions have been seen as a promising means for helping older employees remain healthy and living the transition to the pension peacefully.

Objective:

This literature review aims at exploring studies on digital health coaching programs targeting older workers and at discussing their effectiveness in helping their transition from work to retirement. Despite this promising trend, Thereby, this paper discusses the findings of a review focused on the topic of digital coaching programs for older employees.

Methods:

The search identified 1931 papers and a total of 2 relevant articles was selected by applying the specific eligibility criteria.

Results:

In our knowledge, few digital coaching programs have targeted the specific scenario of older workers so far. Consequently, the presence of studies that prove the efficacy of such programs is still almost insufficient. The results of this literature review show the difficulties of assessing the efficacy of digital coaching in itself and especially targeting older employees. Even if the two considered publications suggest that workplace digital health programs can improve various aspects of older employees’ well-being, the literature around this issue remains in an embryonal state. This gap needs to be filled in by further investigations that should address the following key points: a multi-perspective and user-centred approach for designing the technology; the need to test innovative research methodologies; the need to adopt new technical solutions and for high-quality interaction design.

Conclusions:

Further digital coaching programs aiming at supporting healthy and active older people are welcome. Moreover, there is also the need for digital programs supporting their psychological and social well-being taking into account the cultural patterns driving the social representations of life after retirement. Clinical Trial: None. Not applicable