Podium Presentation - 10 minutes International Positive Psychology Association 8th IPPA World Congress 2023

The effectiveness of a subscription mental fitness program for Korean workers (#146)

Junghyo Park 1 , Junghee Park 1 , Dasom Choo 1
  1. BLOOM COMPANY, Seoul, South Korea

Background

Mental health issues become prevalent in corporates of South Korea, with the 2nd-longest working hours and the highest suicide rate in the OECD. To mitigate the mental conflict situation, we have been developing a subscription mental fitness program, Maum.fit for corporate employees. It sends subscribers 2 emails a week. One is an online mental well-being check-up questionnaire based on the PERMA model + vitality. The other one delivers the check-up result and a positive psychology intervention for the week. We assumed the Question-Behavior Effect that checking their wellbeing status every week could facilitate their behaviors for well-beings. So we conducted two pilot programs and analyzed their responses and feedback. 

Aims

Change employees’ experience positively by improving their mental health with regular mental well-being check-ups and micro positive psychology interventions at workplace 

Method

We recruited 35 office workers from various industries and sent two emails a week for 5 weeks. Every Friday, the participants checked their satisfaction level of the week by PERMA-V questionnaire. Then, on the next Monday, they received individual and group scores and the positive intervention of the week. (e.g., 3GT, Random of kindness, etc.). And the second pilot was 4 weeks emailing for 21 office workers in the same organization. 

Results

No significant difference was found between check-up scores of beginning and end. Nevertheless, 4 participants and the HR manager who were interviewed after pilots mentioned that it was a positive experience at the workplace and showed positive intentions for a subscription of a mental fitness program. 

Conclusion

Just asking about well-being was not enough to facilitate their behaviors for a positive psychology intervention. One interviewee mentioned he once tried the intervention in the email, as it seemed to increase his lowest element of PERMA-V. The third pilot in preparation will provide a personalized intervention on the Monday email and a Metaverse mental fitness center to facilitate their behaviors.

  1. Seligman, M. (2018). PERMA and the building blocks of well-being. The journal of positive psychology, 13(4), 333-335.
  2. Spangenberg, E. R., Kareklas, I., Devezer, B., & Sprott, D. E. (2016). A meta-analytic synthesis of the question–behavior effect. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(3), 441-458.
  3. Kim Yon-se, (2021, Mar 9). Korea has 2nd-longest working hours in OECD. The Korea Herald https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210309000162
  4. "Health status - Suicide rates - OECD Data". https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide-rates.htm
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