Evaluation of Health Promotion Switzerland’s ‘Friendly Work Space Apprentice’ project
In 2011, Health Promotion Switzerland launched a project to promote the mental health of young people in host company settings (Friendly Work Space Apprentice). SFUVET helped to evaluate the project from 2019 to 2022 during three different project stages.
Adolescence is an important time in life when health-influencing behaviours can emerge, become entrenched and have an impact over one’s entire life. It is therefore very important for adolescents to be shown ways to improve their health, which in turn will enable them to sustainably consolidate their resources and prevent psychological problems. This is why Health Promotion Switzerland began developing the ‘Friendly Work Space Apprentice’ offer in 2011 to promote the mental health of young people in host company settings.
The ‘Friendly Work Space Apprentice’ project consisted of a paid-for (FWS Apprentice Company) and a free-of-charge (FWS Apprentice Experts) offer. The FWS Apprentice Company consisted of four elements: The Apprentice App aimed at the target group of apprentices and VET professionals as well as the website, continuing training programmes and meeting events for VET professionals and workplace health management. FWS Apprentice Experts is made up of the same elements, but the app is exclusively aimed at VET professionals and does not contain any company-specific content.
SFUVET helped to evaluate the project during three stages by carrying out a developmental evaluation.A developmental evaluation is conducted for the purpose of facilitating development of an innovative object of evaluation. Innovations are often characterised by the fact that they continuously evolve and adapt within a rapidly changing and unforeseeable environment. This means that evaluation steps cannot be planned in the long term. Instead, feedback loops must be introduced in order to take changing conditions into account in timely fashion and adapt the evaluation process accordingly.
This developmental evaluation is also intended to provide the information needed to decide whether this project should be scaled up.
From 2019 to 2020, the implementation of the Apprentice App was evaluated at five pilot host companies based on a situational analysis in all five companies. Use of the Apprentice App was also evaluated based on usage data.
From 2020 to 2021, the continued implementation of the Apprentice App at one pilot company was analysed using the app’s usage data.
From 2021 to 2022, the implementation of the free-of-charge FWS Apprentice Experts offer was evaluated covering all of its elements. Online surveys as well as the usage data of the app and website were analyzed.
The first evaluation stage showed that the Apprentice App was not used very much by the apprentices and VET professionals at the five pilot host companies. The main reasons indicated by the apprentices and VET professionals were a lack of interest and a lack of need. The project managers at the pilot host companies in particular believe that the success of the Apprentice App depends on how well it manages to add company-specific content and is incorporated into company-specific settings.
The second evaluation stage – on the continued implementation of the Apprentice App at one of the pilot companies – also indicated low usage of the Apprentice App amongst apprentices and VET professionals.
The third evaluation stage – on the implementation of the FWS Apprentice Experts offer – indicated that all four of the FWS Apprentice Experts services met user requirements and were rated as good. The vast majority of regular users also felt more aware of and better informed about the topic of the ‘mental health of apprentices’. The continuing training programmes and meeting events were well used, and the website was also used regularly with rising user numbers. Only the Experts App – despite rising user numbers – was used relatively little.
Based on the results obtained, Health Promotion Switzerland decided that the Apprentice offer – with the toolbox/website, meeting events and continuing training sub-offers – will be continued. In relation to the discontinued app, cooperation with a partner organisation will be sought which can provide an intervention alternative at behavioural level. Information about the Apprentice offer can be found at https://friendlyworkspace.ch/de/bgm-services/apprentice in German, French and Italian. This website containing details on the sub-offers is updated on an ongoing basis.