PRC Workforce
Professional Reality Check™
What PRC does

Every person runs on automatic.
Some of those patterns cost the business.

PRC is a 90-day behavioural protocol delivered by email. It identifies the specific patterns that are reducing a person's output, replaces them with better ones, and installs the replacements until they run automatically. No sessions. No disclosure. No clinical record.


The mechanism

Behaviour runs on triggers, patterns, and cost.

Most of what a person does at work is automatic — it fires in response to a specific situation without deliberate thought. That efficiency becomes a problem when the default pattern is the wrong one. PRC works on three components.

Component 01

The Trigger

The specific context or condition that fires the automatic behaviour. Identified precisely — not generally.

Component 02

The Pattern

What the person does automatically when the trigger fires. This is the target. Not the person — the pattern.

Component 03

The Cost

What that pattern produces in output terms. Quantified by the participant across 7 measures at four points in the protocol.


The protocol — 90 days

Three phases. Sequential. Structured.

56 email inputs. 14 worksheets. PRC Index measured at days 1, 30, 60, and 90. The sequence cannot be shortcut — each phase depends on the one before it.

Days 1–30
Mapping
The participant identifies which of their default patterns are running at a cost. Triggers are pinpointed. The gap between current and possible output is established.
Days 31–60
Redesign
Replacement patterns are designed. Each one is anchored to the same trigger as the default it replaces — so the context fires the new behaviour automatically, not by willpower.
Days 61–90
Installation
The replacement patterns are repeated under structured conditions until they run automatically. Automaticity is the goal, not awareness, not intention. The cue-to-response pairing is installed as an implementation intention (Gollwitzer, 1999) and repeated to automaticity (Lally et al., 2010).

90
Days. Fixed sequence. No shortcuts.
56
Structured email inputs across the protocol
7
Self-report measures in the PRC Index
10%+
EAP uptake in a typical UK workforce, up from around 4%
£103bn
Total annual UK cost of workforce sickness — IPPR 2024
Source: IPPR, 2024
0
Names visible to the employer. Ever.

Why organisations use PRC

The 90% your EAP never reaches.

Standard employee assistance programmes now reach around 10% of a workforce, up from about 4% historically. That is the group willing to self-refer into a programme linked to HR. PRC is built for the other 90%: senior professionals and mid-tier leaders who will not raise their hand but are operating below their productive capacity. (EAPA UK, 2024)

Peer-reviewed research confirms that employees resist EAPs specifically because those programmes are perceived as aligned with management, and because disclosure carries career risk. Structural anonymity, not a promised confidentiality policy, is the only mechanism that removes that resistance. (Dewa et al., Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2021; Brohan et al., BMC Psychiatry, 2012)

EAP uptake
10%+
Of employees who have access to an EAP use it in a typical year, up from around 4%. EAPA UK, 2024
Awareness gap
27%
Of UK employees knew their EAP existed, despite 79% of employers offering one. HCML, 2024

Anonymity is structural

The employer sees seat numbers, completion rates, and aggregate movement data. No names. No HR pathway. No clinical record. Anonymity is not promised — it is built into how the product works.

No clinical overhead

PRC is a performance protocol. It does not diagnose, refer, or treat. There is no clinical contact and no case management. The organisation does not acquire liability by deploying it.

The financial case is direct

One £70k senior operating at 70% capacity for 6 months represents approximately £10,500 in lost output. IPPR puts the total hidden cost of UK workforce sickness at £103bn a year. Presenteeism is the larger share — an average of 44 productive days lost per employee to working below capacity, against 6.7 to absence. PRC costs a fraction of the per-head exposure.

IPPR, 2024

Reaches the unreachable

The target participant will not self-refer. They will not engage with anything positioned as support. PRC is positioned as a performance protocol — which is what it is. That framing removes the barrier to entry.

Delivered without HR involvement

The protocol runs entirely by email direct to the participant. HR sets up the deployment. After that, the system runs. No ongoing management, no case tracking, no sessions to schedule.

Evidence-based mechanism

The protocol draws on CBT (Beck), behavioural chain analysis (Linehan), habit and context research (Wood and Neal), implementation intentions (Gollwitzer), and automaticity research (Lally). Each element has direct workplace application.

The route map

Do not take that on trust. Go and look.

Structural is a strong word, so here is the structure. One page, colour-coded, showing every piece of information the protocol touches and exactly who can see it. What you receive. What you never receive. And why the second list is a fact about the architecture rather than a promise on a page.

See where the information goes → It is the same page your people will read. Give them the address and let them check it privately, on their own phone, without clicking anything you sent them: prcworkforce.com/who-sees-what
What PRC does not do

PRC does not address structural problems — overload caused by under-resourcing, role design failures, or management decisions. If the primary problem is outside the participant's behavioural control, PRC will not fix it. Those are management decisions, not protocol targets.


The financial exposure

Presenteeism costs six times more than absence.

Absenteeism is tracked. Presenteeism is not. UK employees lose an average of 44 productive days per year by attending work while a pattern is running at cost — compared to 6.7 days lost to sickness absence. The larger liability sits in the office, not outside it.

Metric
Absenteeism
Presenteeism
Annual UK cost
£5bn
Cost increase since 2018
£25bn
Cost increase since 2018 — 5× larger
Days lost per employee per year
6.7 days
44 days
Visible to HR
Yes — tracked
No — unmeasured
PRC addresses it
Partially
Directly
Source: IPPR, 2024. Total UK sickness cost £103bn. £25bn of the £30bn increase since 2018 attributed to presenteeism.

The Employment Rights Act 2025, effective April 2026, converts this from a productivity argument into a statutory payroll liability. Employers now carry SSP exposure from day one of any absence it generates, an estimated £400m in additional employer SSP cost across the UK each year. The commercial case for PRC is not a wellbeing argument, it is a cost-per-head calculation. (DWP, Employment Rights Act 2025: Economic Analysis, 2026)


The evidence

Each element of the protocol maps to published research.

PRC is not a coaching framework. It is a structured behavioural protocol. Every component has a documented evidence base with direct application in workplace settings.

Beck
Cognitive Behavioural
Automatic thoughts and the cognitive model. The Mapping phase is structured around Beck's cognitive model: the protocol identifies the specific thought patterns and automatic responses that fire between trigger and behaviour. Participants do not analyse — they observe and record, which is the precondition for change. Beck, A.T., Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (1976)
Linehan
Behavioural Chain Analysis
Phase sequencing is non-negotiable. Linehan's behavioural chain analysis underpins the three-phase structure: Mapping must precede Redesign, Redesign must precede Installation. The sequence cannot be compressed. Skipping the mapping phase produces a replacement that has no trigger anchor and will not install. Linehan, M.M., Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (1993)
Wood & Neal
Habit & Context
Context fires the habit, not willpower. Wood and Neal's research establishes that automatic behaviours are triggered by stable contexts — not by decisions. The Redesign phase anchors replacement behaviours to the same context as the default, so the trigger fires the new response instead of the old one. Wood, W. & Neal, D.T., A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface, Psychological Review (2007)
Gollwitzer
Implementation Intentions
If/then planning converts intention into automatic action. Gollwitzer's implementation intention research shows that specifying when and where a behaviour will occur dramatically increases follow-through. The protocol's IF/THEN constructions are the mechanism by which the replacement is linked to the trigger. A 2024 study in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology confirmed this mechanism produces habit formation directly in workplace settings. Gollwitzer, P.M., Implementation intentions, American Psychologist (1999) · Trenz and Keith, JOOP (2024)
Lally
Automaticity
Automaticity requires time, not effort. Lally's research on habit formation timelines establishes that automaticity — the point at which a behaviour runs without deliberate initiation — requires consistent repetition over an extended period. This is why the protocol is 90 days. Shorter interventions produce intention, not automaticity. Lally, P. et al., How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world, EJSP (2010)

References

Sources and evidence base.


For organisations ready to address the performance gap no other product reaches.