Mira Vogelsang, Author at HEALTH CASCADE

Part II: Driving impactful change to workplace well-being: A Scottish company’s co-creation journey

Mira Vogelsang — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 12:32:44 +0000

Mira Vogelsang is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral fellow within the Health CASCADE project. Her research focuses on comparing the core elements of different co-creation processes, contributing to generalisable protocol development on how to conduct co-creation for workplace sedentary behaviour interventions.

The Workplace Health Co-Creation Study focused on addressing sedentary behaviour among employees – a growing concern in the context of increasing desk-based jobs. In a collaborative effort, a group of nine employees from Lifelink, a small-to-medium-sized enterprise in Glasgow, engaged in a co-creation process facilitated by myself and Lauren McCaffrey. The goal was to develop an action plan to tackle sedentary behaviour in the workplace. This initiative placed a strong emphasis on incorporating the voices of employees, ensuring their central role in shaping the future of workplace health at Lifelink.

I spoke with Jennifer Gordon, HR Director and a key co-creator from Lifelink, nine months after the Workplace Health Co-Creation Study concluded. She shared compelling insights into the longer-term transformative impact the study had on organisational culture, employee behaviours, and financial outcomes.

Reflecting on the study’s impact, Jennifer notes a tangible shift in organisational dynamics. Employees are now more conscious about sedentary behaviour, leading to practical changes such as holding more “walk and talk” meetings and organising monthly games nights. Managers have become more encouraging towards health initiatives, as evidenced by meetings being shortened from an hour to 45 minutes where possible, promoting movement between meetings. These initiatives not only promote physical activity but also contribute to a more engaging and well-rounded workplace environment.

Jennifer emphasises that these changes have improved relationships and job satisfaction, making interactions more open and relaxed. The actions to address sitting at work created during the study aligned well with Lifelink’s values, particularly around enabling individuals to be themselves and incorporating fun into the workday —for instance, holding one-on-one meetings while walking rather than sitting in an office. The study’s impact extends to individual behaviours, with employees adopting healthier habits such as taking breaks for walks and actively managing their well-being. Jennifer shares how one team member has embraced wellness tips from the study, leading to personal lifestyle changes. From a financial perspective, Lifelink has benefited from reduced recruitment costs thanks to lower turnover rates. New investments in health-focused initiatives, such as adjustable desks, further demonstrate Lifelink’s commitment to employee well-being.

Reflecting on the study’s outcomes, Jennifer enthusiastically recommends similar initiatives to other organisations. She underscores the value of the sustained, collaborative effort over time rather than relying on a one-off intervention. In conclusion, Lifelink’s participation in the Workplace Health Co-Creation Study exemplifies the power of employee-centric initiatives in fostering positive organisational change. By prioritising health and well-being, companies like Lifelink are not only enhancing their culture but also reaping tangible benefits that extend beyond the bottom line.

On behalf of our dedicated research team, I would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to the employees at Lifelink for their time and invaluable contributions and wish Lifelink continued success in their ongoing efforts to promote health and well-being in the workplace.

Do Lifelink’s innovative changes inspire you? Get in touch with us at mira.vogelsang@gcu.ac.uk

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Listening to young voices: How co-creation could transform Glasgow

Lauren McCaffrey — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 12:40:08 +0000

Glasgow Science Festival, a city-wide festival of science-fuelled fun for adults and children alike, returned for its 18th year, celebrating how research transforms our lives, cities, and futures! This year, Health CASCADE researchers based at Glasgow Caledonian University hosted a session in the beautiful Botanic Gardens on June 13, 2024.

Our Harry Potter-themed co-creation activity was based on the storyboard method, a visual planning technique used to organise and present a sequence of events, ideas, or processes. We tailored this method for children by making it more interactive and using child-friendly tools like markers, magazines to cut from, and glue. We also provided an example of a completed tile to help them understand the concept.

Each team was challenged to reimagine and create a new vision for Glasgow. The activity began with a giant storyboard featuring a starter tile depicting Lord Voldemort’s dramatic destruction of Glasgow. We encouraged everyone to think about their favourite places, such as schools, parks, and neighbourhoods, and consider how they could transform them into magical and inviting spaces.

Each house team was tasked with creating a tile—a masterpiece on A4 paper—that showcased their vision for a rebuilt part of Glasgow. Every group had a ‘Head of House’, Danielle, Lauren, Mira, Quentin and Seb, who helped them bring their ideas to life. Once their magical tile was completed, they gave it a title, and one brave volunteer presented their creation to everyone, explaining their vision. Finally, they placed their tile on the storyboard wall, contributing to the collective rebuilding of Glasgow, piece by piece.

During this activity, children shared how they would transform Glasgow using their creativity and artistic talents. We encouraged their creativity and collaboration by tailoring the storyboard method to become accessible to children, resulting in rich, creative outputs that showcased their ideas and storytelling skills.

Themes:

Below are the title and brief description of the different collages that each team of children created following the prompt: “If you were in charge, what would your Glasgow look like?”

Green Spaces

These creative ideas for green spaces are all about connecting with nature and the community. “Raven’s Green City” is packed with bikes, trees, and picnic spots, while “The Magical Garden” is about fruits, veggies, and ponds. “The Nature-based Park” focuses on farming, recycling, and animals, and “Love for the Earth” imagines a happy planet with clean water, recycling, and lots of wildlife. “The Better Glasgow” dreams of green grass, clean swimming water, and animals, and “The Magical Flower Park” adds a playful touch with fruit stands, flowers, birds, and even a helicopter. “www.Green Power of Greenness.com” envisions a city with clean air, abundant green spaces, beautiful clean water, and a strong focus on recycling and cycling. Each idea brings its unique vibe, blending nature with a fun, sustainable lifestyle.

Food

These ideas add a sweet and sunny twist to transforming Glasgow. “The Glasgow of Dreams” imagines a place with free ice cream, beaches, blue skies, green mountains, and plenty of dogs. “The Yummy Bakery” envisions a beautifully designed spot in the park, serving up healthy and tasty treats, fruits, and juices, blending deliciousness with a perfect park setting.

Animals

One team created “The WillTill Army,” a magical force of protectors ready to defend Glasgow from Lord Voldemort. Another group dreamed up “No Pests, Only Cows,” envisioning a city full of green, clean spaces where all kinds of animals, from monkeys to turtles—and plenty of cows—could live freely. The “New Future of Glasgow” brings butterflies, berries, trees, animals, recycling, and beautiful houses to the forefront. And then there’s “The Perfect Nature Glasgow,” filled with diverse animals like elephants, puffins, dogs, seals, birds, and cats, all under the warmth of endless sunshine with birds soaring through the skies.

Sports and Activities

Each collage is a playful glimpse into how these kids would shape a more fun, active, and artistic Glasgow! “Glasgow is Sport” envisions a super active city full of sports facilities, with plenty of fruits and veggies to energise everyone. “KPL Theme Park” is all about fun, featuring waterslides, swimming areas, and many animals, with recycling bins to keep everything tidy. Another group came up with “The Perfect City,” where sports rivalries are a thing of the past, basketball reigns supreme, and there are always places to grab some chips (French fries). “Glasgow FC” transforms the entire city into a giant football field with free ice cream and sunny skies. Finally, “Arts Land” is about boosting the arts scene with more creative activities throughout the city, including cycling and lots of green spaces.

Harmonious Glasgow

Many created a holistic vision of a harmonious Glasgow that touched on more than one of the themes, painting a picture of a dreamlike Glasgow where positivity and nature take centre stage. The “Perfect, Wonderful, Super Glasgow” is a place where good ideas are always welcomed, and you can enjoy excellent restaurants, fruits, petting zoos, flowers, green grass, and birds. In “Everything Anytime,” it’s a city where palm trees sway, and you can get whatever you want whenever you want, with excellent food and stylish clothes. “The Witcher Glasgow” envisions a magical world with plants, clean water for swimming, penguins, and berries. “Celtic City – Best City in Scotland” is full of smiling people, dogs, seals, puffins, birds, elephants, flowers, and endless sunshine. “The City that Says Only ‘Yes'” is a place of infinite friendship, beautiful grassy fields, towering skyscrapers with trees, and politicians who are always on board. Finally, “The Ideal House” is a serene, light-filled home made of wood and glass, with cream and natural colours indoors and a deer to complete the tranquil setting.

Engage children!

This experience showed us that we must engage children and give them a voice in meaningful discussions. Giving children a platform to envision what they want their future to look like can boost their confidence in their ability to contribute. Encouraging them to be curious and explore different options allows for creativity and ensures their perspectives and ideas are considered, making solutions relevant to them.

Storyboarding can be a powerful medium for improving communication skills among children. It allows them to express their ideas visually, making varied concepts tangible and easier to discuss. It also allows children to practice working together and forming a collaborative vision with other children they do not know.

Good facilitation is crucial, as children have varied interests, an abundance of ideas, and different attention spans. Facilitation should promote group cohesion without forcing involvement, creating a support environment where children can choose to engage when they feel ready.

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Insights on designing a co-creations in SMEs for interventions on sedentary behaviour at ISBNPA 2023

Mira Vogelsang — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 07:52:24 +0000

In her presentation, Mira Vogelsang shared insights on designing a co-creation process in small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop interventions on sedentary behaviour. She outlined three key steps of her approach.

First, she emphasized the importance of narrowing down the aim of the co-creation process. Using the PRODUCES framework, she highlighted the significance of considering various factors before designing the sessions. Second, she discussed the design of the sessions, drawing from academic and grey literature to identify suitable steps aligned with the objective and context of the co-creation process. Lastly, she stressed the need to select participatory methods sourced from both academic and grey literature that promote engagement, collaboration, as well as fun and creativity.

The co-creation process was implemented in three Scottish SMEs, undergoing iterations based on input and feedback from the co-creators and research team. This valuable work will contribute to the development of guidelines for effectively utilizing co-creation processes in the workplace to successfully create interventions.

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The learning curve of facilitating co-creation workshops

Mira Vogelsang — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 10:41:49 +0000

Mira Vogelsang is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral fellow within the Health CASCADE project. Her research focuses on comparing the core elements of different co-creation processes, contributing to a generalisable protocol on how to conduct co-creation for workplace sedentary behaviour interventions.

Mira has been conducting several co-creation processes, each involving a series of workshops, that focus on reducing sedentary behaviour in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Glasgow, Scotland. At each workplace she facilitates a workgroup of employees who collaborate and develop actions tailored to their company. In this blog, she shares her biggest lessons so far on facilitating co-creation workshops in the workplace.

Find out more about Mira’s research project website: https://workplacehealthstudy.co.uk/

Lessons learned with facilitation

In the last year, I have been facilitating co-creation workshops at SMEs in Glasgow, Scotland. I want to share my experience so that future facilitators may benefit from it. Lessons ranged from using fun and engaging tools to dealing with timing and goal setting.

Using tools and methods that are engaging is key to facilitation. When I first started working with employees, I hesitated to use fun – and sometimes goofy – methods. Ultimately, I found that they greatly enjoyed taking part in the games, quizzes and other fun tools. You can and should try to step outside the box to make an exercise as fun and engaging as possible. As my work focuses on reducing sitting, I experienced that also in the work setting, you should not shy away from getting them to stand up and move a lot more. Strategies such as having standing meetings, may not only break the usual way that meetings are conducted, and create a new angle of engagement, but it may also enhance other employees to do so.

When facilitating, it is also important to manage time. This was a huge learning curve for me, which I am still trying to get to grips with. Three tips helped me here: (1) I ran a pilot of our first workshop with colleagues; (2) I practice the duration of exercises and write down my estimated time for the session to use as a cheat sheet during it; (3) I consider before the start of a workshop which parts of the workshop I could shorten or drop, and which useful exercises I could add at the end. By considering this in advance, you will be better able to adapt to the pace of the meeting.

I also quickly learned I needed to clearly emphasise the purpose of the workshop and the exercises we were doing. It had to be clear how they fitted into the overall purpose. I found that discussing this explicitly, and often multiple times (e.g., mentioning the purpose of the workshop at the beginning and end of the workshop; and having an aim statement for every exercise), created more clarity about the process and contributed to their engagement.

Mira facilitating a workshop in a SME

The unique challenges with co-creation

Co-creation brings some unique challenges for facilitations. It is very important to create a safe space where everyone is of equal importance, but this can be difficult to do. I approached this by taking the time to talk to them about co-creation and how it affects our role and view of the process. I feel this contributed to successful co-creation workshops and helped them understand the flexibility involved. It also aided in explaining that we were there not as researchers, but as facilitators. We were there to support them to work together effectively and ensure that everyone was involved in a meaningful way.

Co-creation is supposed to be flexible and should be tailored to the needs of the group, but the work that goes into this can be intense and resource heavy at times. I recommend carefully considering your personal boundaries as a facilitator in co-creation workshops before-hand and reevaluating them during. I usually set aside two or three days to reflect on how the previous workshop went and work on the adjustments for the next workshop. This time-frame meant I could be very flexible and take on board many of the co-creators evaluations, but also allowed me to recognise when changes to be made fell outside this time-frame and thus my personal resources.

Mira and Lauren before the start of the 4th Workshop

I suspect that I will face many more challenges as I continue my journey as a facilitator, yet I am very proud already of how much my team and I have learned, grown and succeeded. However, most importantly, I am proud of all the co-creators who successfully conducted the co-creation workshops. They produced many co-created actions that are taking off. I look forward to the co-creation workshops still to come. Cheers from Glasgow.

Find out more about Mira’s research project website: https://workplacehealthstudy.co.uk/

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Lets get working, The co-creation sessions of WP4

Lauren McCaffrey — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 14:40:24 +0000

Health Cascade researchers Lauren McCaffrey and Mira Vogelsang located at Glasgow Caledonian University, are focusing on co-creation in the context of the workplace and have successfully conducted their first co-creation process with a Glaswegian SME as part of their research. The process consisted of 8 workshops that resulted in many co-created actions ready to take off in the New Year.

Mira Vogelsang: “It was a wonderful and engaging process filled with humour that the co-creators took on with full force. This was evident from e.g., their keen interest in learning more about sedentary behaviour to their immediate progress in implementing the actions developed.”

In January Lauren completed the individual in-person interviews with each of the co-creators where they explored their experience of the co-creation process. Overall, the co-creators’ experiences’ were very positive, with many describing the process as ‘interesting’, ‘fun’ and ‘useful’.

Lauren McCaffrey: “The individual interviews were a great way to have the co-creators voice their experience of the process and it was a nice way to conclude my time spent working with this fantastic group of people.”

Do you know a company in Glasgow keen to work with their employees on employee health? For more information feel free to contact mira.vogelsang@gcu.ac.uk or lauren.mccaffrey@gcu.ac.uk or visit their project website: https://workplacehealthstudy.co.uk/.

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