The Environment Agency is planning to develop a mindfulness app to support the mental health of its employees.
It has put out a tender for a supplier to build the app to make it available to 1,500 staff at the agency from April this year.
A spokesperson said: “We hope that by making mindfulness apps available to those that would benefit from using it the most, we can improve our workplace through increased productivity, improved focus, greater collaboration between colleagues, reduce absenteeism and improve people's resilience and wellbeing.”
It also wants to obtain business information on engagement with employees and how the app is used.
Among its requirements it wants a supplier to provide virtual or on-site presentations with an engagement consultant, multi-language support, engagement reporting – including weekly usage statistics and actionable metrics on employee adoption – and an administration portal.
The move follows the running of more than 31,000 mindfulness sessions over 4,400 hours at the Environment Agency since December 2018 using another app. It said these have had a direct benefit of improving general wellbeing, reducing the feeling of stress and anxiety at home and work for those colleagues.
Image by Daragh O'Connor, CC BY-SA 2.0
