Quins Partners With Simetrica-Jacobs to Measure Player Wellbeing

Harlequins RFC has partnered in a pilot programme with Simetrica-Jacobs – becoming the first professional sports club in the world to measure player wellbeing in a scientific way and to invest in deeper insight into personal wellness and its effects on performance. The innovative partnership provides individuals with the tools to monitor personal wellbeing and performance as well as the factors that affect them.

Simetrica-Jacobs' work with Harlequins is led by Dr Daniel Fujiwara, Director of Simetrica-Jacobs and Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) who said: "Over the past decade we have conducted hundreds of studies measuring the wellbeing of the UK public and of staff and customers of some of the largest organisations in the world and a clear pattern has emerged about what makes us happy and more productive and we believe that this can be a real game-changer in sport performance management to understand how players feel and to drive on-pitch success.

“Through our research, we have found that there are a number ways that we can improve people’s wellbeing which leads to better life outcomes including improved health, better social relationships, better productivity, improved teamwork, better training and on-pitch performance and, importantly for pro athletes, reduced injury proneness. We have seen significant improvements with the groups we have worked with to date, and the time is right to apply this in sport where marginal gains are key.”

Simetrica-Jacobs’ research has shown that wellbeing is the single biggest driver of performance in many workplace settings and in this partnership, Quins players and coaching staff will leverage these tools to drive enhanced performance. This includes having detailed analysis and understanding into how their wellbeing and resilience changes throughout the week, during training and in matches, with the tools to improve these factors.