Chapter 12 396 Often interventions that are implemented at the workplace, such as within the PERSIST trial, are deemed efficient because people spend a lot of time at work and employers benefit from investing in the health of their workforce. A study investigating what employees expect from workplace-based interventions showed that employees feel appreciated when their employer implements workplacebased health interventions.13 However, it was primarily conducted among white collar workers and the authors acknowledged that blue collar workers might rate other aspects of workplace health promotion as more or less important, as their jobs are inherently different. Such differences might also be present in the PERSIST study. Trial participants were generally positive about the study, while interviews with co-workers who did not participate in the trial showed that they were predominantly negative about workplace interventions. Methodological challenges PERSIST The main limitation in the PERSIST trial, described in Chapter 11, was its small sample size. Due to the low recruitment the trial was terminated prematurely and no firm conclusion regarding the effectiveness of personalised incentives could therefore be drawn. When conducting research with human participants, recruitment is an essential issue. Yet, the ability to recruit study participants is perhaps too often overestimated. Effective recruitment necessitates a skill set encompassing elements of client acquisition, salesmanship, and project management—attributes that may not always align precisely with traditional research proficiencies. To enhance the proficiency of doctoral students and foster their academic careers, it is important to incorporate training in these recruitment skills within PhD programs where recruitment of respondents plays a central role. However, even with such a skillset there would be no guarantee for successful recruitment. Practical barriers such as night shifts or irregular working hours can make group trainings inaccessible for health care workers. Within PERSIST, we tried to reduce such barriers by offering the group base training at the workplace and offering reimbursement of the training if not covered by the employees’ health insurance. Furthermore, while in PERSIST heterogeneity in participants was embraced by individualizing incentives, many more aspects could have benefitted from a more personal approach. Different communication strategies could have been used to approach different types of participants. For example, employees who work in facility (i.e. cleaning) or have direct patient
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw