The main objectives were to provide tools for stress prevention and management on both personal and business level, raise awareness about the importance of mental health and thus contribute to the creation of safer and healthier workplaces across the EU. These objectives remained unchanged for the entire duration of the project. In the first stage of our project, we wanted to execute an EU-wide research to dig out the specific issues concerning work-related stress factors and needs to be addressed, in order to accurately define the training content, and based on that to elaborate a comprehensive policy recommendations report to provide an impetus for a EU-wide action on work-related stress management. In the second phase of the project, we wanted to develop an innovative training course for work-related stress management and prevention, aiming to transfer specific skills and competences to the end users. We also wanted to create additional tools to support this objective like a tool to help the end users discover if they are under stress and provide them specific resources to manage it. We also wanted to create a mobile application to facilitate easy access to all these these tools and that's exactly what we did.
Work-related stress and burnout have been (and still are) a growing concern for employees and employers in the EU. This was especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic (when we applied for the project), which was a driver for significant changes in the working environments of millions of adults. At proposal stage, our research showed more than half of all working days lost in the EU are because of stress, and more than half of all workers in the EU report that work-related stress is common in their workplace. - A need to raise awareness around the the consequences of work-related stress and burnout; - A need for a coordinated policy solution, to enable both employers and employees prevent stress and burnout on the workplace; - A need for a resources and tools to help equip EU's workforce to learn how hope to cope with work-related stress and burnout; - A need for easily accessible digital tools addressing work-related stress in a modern way; Via our extensive EU-wide research with 516 adult workers, we've simultaneously both re-confirmed this and discovered troubling trends and uncovered reasons of why this was happening. Our project addressed these issues by creating on point digital tools for stress and burnout management.