What is Care Program and why does it redefine workplace wellbeing?

Care Program is yeshcube’s applied research program dedicated to emotional wellbeing in work environments. Its role is to design, evaluate and validate technological solutions before their transfer to organizations is considered.

The program starts from a methodological point: the fact that a tool is appealing, easy to use or technically viable does not prove that it improves people’s wellbeing. Establishing its usefulness means studying its effects, its acceptance, its limits and the specific conditions in which it is used.

That is the shift Care proposes. Workplace wellbeing is treated as a question of work design and risk prevention, subject to the same evidence requirements as any other health intervention before it is taken as sound.

Evidence-based workplace wellbeing

Mental health at work is shaped by factors such as workload, autonomy, how tasks are organized, safety, professional relationships and the support available. For that reason, an individual intervention cannot be evaluated in isolation from the environment where it is applied.

The World Health Organization’s guidelines on mental health at work, published in 2022, recommend combining the prevention of psychosocial risks with organizational interventions, individual support for workers, and training for managers and staff. Technological solutions can be part of that mix, but they should not be used to compensate for harmful working conditions or to shift the whole responsibility for wellbeing onto the individual.

The program takes this contextual perspective. Its research studies whether a technology works under controlled conditions and, in addition, how it fits into the work environment, who uses it, what acceptance it obtains and what limitations appear in use.

Applied research in real settings

Care Program works through co-research processes with organizations, scientific teams and technology partners. Work environments act as validation spaces where a solution’s behavior can be observed outside the lab.

Each piece of research starts from a defined question and uses a design suited to the type of technology, the population taking part and the outcome being studied. Evaluation may consider dimensions such as effectiveness, safety, acceptance, feasibility of use and fit with the context.

The design assumes from the outset that a study may produce neutral results, surface limitations, or reveal inappropriate uses or unforeseen effects. That capacity to discard, modify or halt a development is part of the scientific process, and it is what separates research from the validation of a commercial hypothesis.

What Care Program researches

Care’s lines of work focus on technologies and experiences aimed at emotional wellbeing during the working day.

Active research includes conversational support protocols that study stress, mental load and recovery within the work environment. These experiences may incorporate conversational artificial intelligence, sound and acoustically controlled spaces.

Care Program does not assume that these solutions are effective simply because they use artificial intelligence or immersive technologies. Each application is evaluated independently and in relation to the specific problem it sets out to address.

From validation to transfer

Transfer is the process by which a researched solution can be incorporated into a product, a service or a real environment of use.

Moving to that phase takes more than a technical demonstration. It requires knowing the conditions of use, the limits, the foreseeable risks and the level of evidence reached.

The program documents that progression with yeshcube’s ERL scale (Evidence Readiness Level). This framework records the maturity of each piece of research and prevents an experimental solution from being presented as consolidated before there is sufficient evidence.

Validation does not guarantee that an intervention can be transferred identically to any company. Results obtained in one organization, sector or group of participants must be interpreted within that context and replicated where necessary.

An infrastructure for researching workplace wellbeing

Care Program is a research and transfer structure from which to study which solutions are useful, for which people and under what conditions. Its remit sits outside the catalog of wellbeing activities and the provision of support services to companies.

This approach makes it possible to tell a satisfying experience apart from an intervention with verifiable effects. It also requires treating workplace wellbeing as a question bound up with work design, risk prevention and organizational culture, rather than reducing it to the isolated use of an app or a device.

Care Program researches how technology can intervene in that system without taking over organizations’ responsibility or anticipating conclusions that still have to be demonstrated.