Abstract
BACKGROUND: For many employees, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to changes in working conditions, with increased use of digital technologies. Digital health promotion and prevention programmes can open up new opportunities for participation by companies and employees. Older employees are often slower to adopt to new technologies. We investigated whether the willingness of older employees to utilise such digital offers changed during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, taking socio-demographic and work-related organisational factors into account. METHODS: Data from 2,267 randomly sampled older employees born in 1959 or 1965, who were in socially insured employment in Germany in the 3rd (2018) and 4th wave (2022/2023) of the prospective lidA (living at work) cohort study, were analysed. The change in the willingness to utilise online-based interventions, health apps and knowledge transfer platforms during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was analysed according to socio-demographic and work-related aspects using the McNemar’s test. RESULTS: While around 80% of older employees favoured non-digital workplace health promotion and prevention measures in 2018, by 2022/2023 it was only 70%. In 2018, only 31.8% were willing to use online-based intervention services, by 2022/2023 it was 48.0%. 50.1% of older employees were willing to use health apps in 2022/2023, 12.2% more than in 2018. In contrast, the increase in the use of online platforms for knowledge transfer was only 4.5%. In terms of willingness to utilise online platforms for knowledge transfer and online-based intervention supplies, the proportion of men, older employees and those with a low level of education, who had initially expressed a willingness to participate and no longer do so, was high after the pandemic. In contrast, the willingness to use health apps increased for almost everyone during this period. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the willingness to utilise digital health promotion and prevention programmes increased among older employees between 2018 and 2022/2023. The circumstances of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic may have increased the acceptance of digital appliances. However, the opposite trend observed among certain socio-demographic groups regarding knowledge transfer platforms could also be due to the overuse of digital tools during this period. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-026-14398-1.