JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) account for major disability and premature mortality worldwide, with low- and middle-income countries being disproportionately burdened. Given the negative impact of NCDs on employee performance and work productivity, there is a rising need for stakeholders to identify effective workplace solutions that can improve employee health outcomes. As the workplace becomes more dispersed post-pandemic, digital behavioural coaching offers a scalable, personalised, and cost-effective method of managing chronic disease risk factors among employees.

Objective:

Our objective was to retrospectively evaluate the impact of a digital behavioural coaching program on year-to-year changes in employee health status in a cohort of Indonesian employees.

Methods:

This retrospective real-world analysis of secondary health data followed 774 employees of an Indonesian company who completed company-sponsored health screenings between 2021 and 2022 and were given access to Naluri, a holistic digital therapeutics platform offering digital behavioural health coaching and self-help tools. Participants were retrospectively classified as those who received active coaching (n=177), passive coaching (n=108), and no coaching (n=489). Linear mixed-effect models were used to evaluate the year-to-year changes in health outcomes across the three employee groups, with post-hoc analyses evaluating within-group differences between the two time points and between-group differences at follow-up.

Results:

Significant time by group interaction effects were detected for body weight, body mass index, HbA1c, low density lipoprotein, total cholesterol, systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed significant improvements in HbA1c (mean difference= -0.14, p=0.008), high density lipoprotein (mean difference= +2.14, p<0.001), and total cholesterol (mean difference= -11.45, p<0.001) for employees in the active coaching group between 2021 and 2022, with the other two groups reporting deteriorations in multiple health outcomes throughout the two time points. At follow-up, those who received active coaching between 2021 and 2022 reported significantly lower body weight (p<0.001), BMI (p=0.001), LDL (p=0.045), and total cholesterol (p<0.001) compared to the no coaching group.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates real-world outcomes and implications supporting the use of workplace digital behvavioural coaching in improving employee health status. Given the rising burden of NCDs in the Southeast Asian region, our findings underscore the role that workplace digital health interventions can play in preventing and managing chronic disease risk factors.