We’ve looked at engaging the user in the Optimal Office learning environment regardless of where they are on the “willingness to change scale.” The Principles of Adult Learning tell us how we can make this a long-term part of your company’s health, productivity, and wellness — rather than a program with the 30% or less adherence that is found in most wellness and health intervention efforts.

Teaching new skills to adult learners involves understanding how adults learn best. Compared to children and teens, adults have special needs and requirements as learners. Despite this apparent truth, adult learning is a relatively new area of study. The field was pioneered by Malcolm Kowles, who identified the following characteristics of adult learners: motivation, reinforcement, retention, and transference.

Principles of Adult Learning and Optimal Office

Motivation: Optimal Office users are motivated to work on their own resiliency to stress because they can easily see when they are adversely reacting to pressure, and they are provided with a real-time method of dealing with this pressure.

Reinforcement: As users engage in the system’s indicators and interventions, and participate in the micro-trainings, their behavior is reinforced as time progresses. As they build their individual bio-feedback data they see that the program is working, further reinforcing and encouraging the user to persist.

Retention: The daily long-term nature of the system and its gentle pervasiveness in the workday make it easy for users to retain their skills and awareness of stress, and to deal with stress quickly and effectively.

Transference: In time, transferring the skills learned from Optimal Office outside of the office will become second nature. Eventually a user no longer needs contact with the SensDevice to recognize stress, but instead instinctively recognizes stress as it happens — applying one of the lessons learned in the micro-training sessions on the spot, anytime, any place.