Ever since the Coronavirus-led pandemic forced the global population to adapt to the work-from-home culture, we’ve seen many companies, organizations and researchers come up with solutions to track people’s mental health. This is because working from home can become stressful for an individual at times, and employers need to help the employees cope up in this time of crisis. So now, there is a wearable that can tell an employer how their employees are feeling in a working week.
Moodbeam Wristband: How it Works?
At first glance, Moodbeam looks like any other fitness tracker that is available in the market. However, instead of a display, the wearable features two buttons – a yellow one and a blue one. What’s their use you ask?
So, whenever an employee feels happy, he/she can press the yellow button, and if the employee is feeling sad or stressed out, he/she can press the blue one.
The wearable uses Bluetooth to connect to an app on smartphones that shows a report of the data collected by Moodbeam. The device will record your data and send it to the app anonymously. This way, an employer will be able to see a cumulative report of his/ her employees’ mental status on the app’s dashboard and take the necessary steps to satisfy their needs.
Moodbeam Wristband: Ideation
Now, the idea of this wearable originated in the mind of Moodbeam’s co-founder, Christina Colmer McHugh. When Christina’s daughter was struggling at school, she wanted to create a way for the child to let her know about her feelings. So, after a lot of work, Colmer came up with Moodbeam, and it was made commercially available back in 2016.
“Businesses are trying to get on top of staying connected with staff working from home. Here they can ask 500 members: ‘You ok?’ without picking up the phone,” Christina said in a statement.
UK charity organization Brave Mind is now using Moodbeam to monitor its staff’s mental health. The organization wants to be there for them in the hour of need.
“One member of the team was in an uncomfortable place, struggling with a huge workload, and disillusioned with what was going on. It’s not something he would have flagged up, and we wouldn’t have known about it unless we had seen the data,” said Paddy Burtt, the trustee of Brave Mind.
