PRC Workforce
Professional Reality Check™
Questions HR Directors ask

Every objection.
Answered directly.

Eleven questions that come up before every procurement decision. The answers are here so the call covers what matters rather than what is already on this page.

If none of these apply, the 30-minute call with Jon is the right next step.

01
"We already have an EAP. Why do we need this as well?"

Your EAP reaches the people willing to self-refer into a clinical pathway. Research puts active uptake at 10%+ of a workforce. PRC is built for the other 90% — specifically the senior professionals and mid-tier leaders who have calculated what a clinical record costs them and decided against it. The two populations barely overlap.

Procuring PRC requires no change to your existing EAP or Occupational Health contract. It runs alongside both. PRC addresses the gap your EAP was never designed to reach — not because the EAP is inadequate, but because the format makes it structurally inaccessible to that population.

EAP uptake: EAPA UK, Securing the Future of the EAP, 2024 · HRMJ, Long et al. (2024): employees resist EAPs perceived as management-aligned
EAP — active uptake
10%+
Of employees with access actually use it in any given year.
EAP — awareness gap
27%
Of UK employees knew their EAP existed — despite 79% of employers offering one.
PRC reaches
90%
The population the EAP structurally cannot reach. No self-referral required.
Contract change needed
None
PRC sits alongside existing EAP and OH provision. No renegotiation required.
02
"How do we know it works if we cannot see individual data?"

The PRC Index is self-rated across seven operational measures at Days 1, 30, 60, and 90. The employer receives aggregate cohort movement — the average shift across all participants on each measure. That is the correct unit of measurement for a site-wide performance protocol: did the cohort move, and by how much.

Individual data is structurally absent — not withheld by policy, but not recorded. This is the same reason PRC reaches the people it reaches. The aggregate is the reporting. It is sufficient for commercial review, board reporting, and any internal audit of provision effectiveness.

What the data cannot tell you is which individual moved. It can tell you that 24 seats completed the protocol and the average PRC Index moved by 2.4 points across seven measures. For a performance protocol purchased at per-employee level, that is the right number to look at.

Employer reporting includes
Seats · Completion · Index movement
Aggregate cohort data. Quarterly. Sufficient for ROI review.
Employer reporting excludes
Names · Scores · Pattern content
Nothing individual is recorded at any point. Not withheld — absent.

The illustrative dashboard on the main site shows what aggregate reporting looks like in practice: seat occupancy, completion rates, and PRC Index movement across all seven measures at Days 1, 30, 60, and 90. No individual identifiers at any point.

03
"What if someone needs more than this? What is the clinical off-ramp?"

PRC is not a clinical service and does not position itself as one. If a clinical concern surfaces during the protocol, the participant is directed explicitly to their GP or NHS 111. Their seat is held. No fee is applied. No restart penalty. The protocol resumes when they are ready.

The disclosures are written in plain language and appear in every email the participant receives. PRC does not diagnose, treat, or refer. It does not create a clinical record. Participation has no bearing on any clinical pathway the participant is currently using or may use in future — the two are structurally separate.

Your existing EAP and Occupational Health provision handles clinical and case-managed need exactly as it does now. If a participant needs that route, they are directed there. PRC is not a substitute. It is the layer for the people who will not engage with either route.

Full scope of practice statement: prcworkforce.com/disclosures.html
Clinical concern surfaces
→ GP or NHS 111
Directed explicitly. Not managed by PRC. Seat held, no fee, no penalty.
Clinical record created
None
Nothing inside the protocol has to be declared to an insurer, employer, or third party.
EAP and OH disrupted
No
Both continue unchanged. PRC is the additional layer for the population neither route reaches.
HR case management required
None
The protocol runs direct to the participant. HR is not in the loop at any stage.
04
"How do we roll this out without it feeling like a wellbeing initiative?"

This is the framing question and it is the right one. PRC is not sent by HR as a support offer. It is a general all-staff communication, from the HR Director, in the same register as any operational announcement. Every employee at the organisation receives identical communication. No individual is singled out.

The subject lines are performance-framed: "Most of a working day runs on autopilot", "Available to everyone here, private to you", "Ninety days, in your inbox, off the record." The all-staff email template, the participant recognition page, and the enrolment page are all written in that register. No clinical language. No wellness framing.

The message is: this is available. What you do with it is private. We cannot see who takes it up. Jon briefs the HR Director on this positioning before deployment and is available for any internal communications review. The framing is not optional — it is what makes the product reach the population it is built for.

Sent by
HR Director
General all-staff notice. Same communication to every employee.
Framed as
Performance protocol
Not support. Not wellbeing. Not a referral. An operational tool available to all.
Link tracking
Off
The all-staff email goes with tracking disabled. No one knows who clicked.
Read receipts
Off
No mechanism by which opening the email can be attributed to an individual.
05
"The per-employee cost is higher than our EAP. How do we justify that internally?"

The EAP comparison is the wrong unit. An EAP at £14 per employee per year reaches 10%+ of the workforce. The real cost per person actually served is from around £140 — before a session is delivered. PRC at £39 per employee reaches the 90% the EAP does not. The per-head cost of provision is lower once you account for who is actually being reached.

The second comparison is against the cost of the problem. One £70k senior at 70% capacity for six months is £10,500 in lost output. The annual Standard licence for a 250-person organisation is £9,750. One participant returning to full capacity covers the entire licence. The Pilot tier at £59 per employee means a 50-person organisation can run the full protocol for £2,950 — less than a single day of lost output from one affected senior.

EAP cost benchmark: EAPA UK, Securing the Future of the EAP, 2024 · Lost output: PRC illustrative calculation on IPPR, 2024 presenteeism basis · Replacement cost: Oxford Economics and Unum, 2014 (£30,614 per professional employee)
EAP — real cost per user
from £140
£14/employee ÷ 10%+ who use it. Per person actually reached.
PRC Standard — per employee
£39
Site-wide. No seat cap. Everyone can enrol. No rationing decisions.
One senior restored
£10,500
Output recovered. Covers the entire 250-employee Standard licence.
Pilot — total cost
£2,950
Up to 50 employees. Less than one day of lost output from one affected senior.
06
"We need to think about it."

That is the right response to most procurement decisions. This one is worth thinking about quickly because the cost of the status quo accrues daily and the downside of trying PRC is close to zero.

What thinking about it usually protects against is internal risk — taking something to a board or budget holder that does not land. The risk profile here is smaller than it looks. The Pilot tier exists precisely for this situation: a defined, low-commitment entry point with a 90-day rolling contract and 90 days notice to exit.

The thinking that needs to happen can happen in a 30-minute call with Jon. If PRC is not the right fit, you will be told on that call.

If you proceed
Pilot. £2,950 total.
90-day contract. 90 days notice to cancel. No IT integration. No existing contract changes.
If it does not land internally
Nothing on file.
No clinical record. No system change. No contract to unwind beyond 90 days notice.
If you do not proceed
Pattern continues.
44 productive days lost per employee on average, per year. SSP from day one of any absence.
Cost of a 4-week decision window
~£1,600
Lost output from one £70k affected senior during the thinking period alone.
07
"It's too expensive."

Compared to what is the question worth asking. Compared to PRC doing nothing — yes, doing nothing is cheaper today. But doing nothing is not a neutral position. The pattern does not plateau. It compounds.

Every quarter it runs unchecked, the gap between what that person is capable of and what they are currently producing widens. The people around them absorb the drag. The decisions they are not making, the conversations they are not having, the work sitting in their queue — that cost is already on your books. It is just not on a line item you can see yet.

The cost of not acting is not zero. It is the daily rate of the pattern running, multiplied by every person in your workforce carrying one. That cost is already being paid. PRC puts it on a line item and addresses it.

"I was paying for it long before I knew it had a price. The difference is I could not see the invoice."

IPPR, 2024: UK workforce sickness cost employers £103bn in 2023, up from £73bn in 2018 — of which £25bn of the rise is lost output from working while sick · 44 productive days lost per employee on average · Employment Rights Act 2025: SSP from day one of absence, effective April 2026
Timeline
Cost of pattern running
Cost of PRC
Today
£0 visible
Lost output is real. Not yet on a budget line.
£2,950
Pilot. Up to 50 employees.
3 months
~£5,250
One £70k senior at 70% capacity.
£0 more
Protocol running. Day 30 review complete.
6 months
~£10,500+
Pattern deepening. SSP exposure live.
£0 more
Protocol complete. Replacement installed.
12 months
£30,614 risk
Replacement cost if they leave, on top of 12 months lost output.
£9,750
Standard. 250 employees. Entire workforce.
Lost output: PRC illustrative calculation on IPPR, 2024 basis · Replacement cost: Oxford Economics and Unum, 2014 · SSP: Employment Rights Act 2025, effective April 2026
08
"I need board or CEO approval before I can move forward."

That is a process question, not an objection to PRC. The materials to make that case internally already exist. Jon can prepare a board-ready briefing note — one page, commercial framing only — for any organisation where the sign-off sits above the HR Director.

The board argument is not a wellbeing argument. It is a liability argument. Since April 2026, SSP applies from day one of any absence. A senior professional carrying an unaddressed pattern is a compounding payroll liability, not a line item in a benefits budget. That is a finance conversation, not an HR conversation, and it lands differently in a boardroom.

The Pilot tier also removes the approval barrier at source. At £2,950 total for up to 50 employees, many HR Directors have sufficient budget authority to run a Pilot without board sign-off. The board case is made on the results, not on the proposal.

Employment Rights Act 2025: SSP from day one of absence, effective April 2026 · DWP estimate: £400m additional annual SSP cost to UK employers from April 2026
Board briefing note
Available on request
One page. Commercial and liability framing. Jon prepares it for the specific organisation.
Pilot — budget authority
£2,950
Most HR Directors can approve this without board sign-off. Pilot first, board case second.
SSP liability from
April 2026
Day one of any absence. Every unaddressed pattern is now a direct payroll exposure.
New annual SSP cost — UK employers
£400m
DWP estimate. The board already has this number in front of them.
09
"What are our GDPR obligations? Who holds the data?"

PRC Workforce holds participant data as data controller. The organisation is not in the data chain for individual participant records at any point. The employer receives aggregate cohort reporting only. No personal data about any individual is transferred to the organisation at any stage.

Participants enrol using a personal email on a personal device. A seat number is assigned. The email is held only to deliver the protocol and is never shared with the employer; it is deleted on request at any time, and on a defined retention schedule set out in the data processing agreement. No name is recorded at any point, and to the employer each participant is a seat number and nothing more.

Because no personal health data is processed by the organisation, there is no requirement for a Data Protection Impact Assessment on the employer's side. PRC is not a health monitoring tool. It is a structured email protocol. The data it processes is completion and self-report index data, held by PRC Workforce under UK GDPR.

Full technical and legal disclosures: prcworkforce.com/disclosures.html · UK GDPR: data held and processed by PRC Workforce as controller
Data controller
PRC Workforce
Not the employer. The organisation is not in the individual data chain.
What the employer receives
Aggregate only
Seat numbers, completion rates, cohort-level index movement. No personal data transferred.
Personal data in system
Personal email + seat ID
Email held only to deliver the protocol and never shared with the employer. Deleted on request at any time. No name at any point.
DPIA required — employer
No
No personal health data processed by the organisation. No health monitoring function.
10
"What if nobody uses it? We have had low uptake on everything else."

Low uptake on existing provision is almost always a format problem, not a demand problem. The people who most need support are not using what you already have because every route requires them to identify themselves. That is not apathy. That is a calculated decision about career risk, insurance implications, and how they are perceived.

PRC removes the identification requirement from the first step. No self-referral. No name on anything. The all-staff communication goes to everyone simultaneously — which means enrolling carries no signal to anyone. There is no list to be on. There is no pattern to identify from a click.

The Pilot tier is the answer to this concern before it becomes a concern. Run it across 50 employees. The uptake data from a real cohort gives you the answer — and gives you the board case if the numbers land. A protocol that reaches the people your EAP does not will produce different uptake numbers than a platform nobody opens.

Why existing provision has low uptake
Format, not demand
Self-referral requirement. Identification risk. Clinical framing. None of these apply to PRC.
PRC removes
All three barriers
No self-referral. No name. No clinical record. Enrolment is private by architecture.
Signal from enrolling
None
All-staff communication. Everyone receives it. Enrolling is indistinguishable from not enrolling.
Risk of low uptake on Pilot
£2,950
Total Pilot cost. The downside of finding out is quantified and small.
11
"We already have too many programmes. Our people have platform fatigue."

Platform fatigue is real and it is a legitimate concern. It is also a different problem to the one PRC addresses. Platform fatigue happens when content-on-demand platforms accumulate without producing outcomes. An app nobody opens, a meditation library that gets browsed once, a wellbeing portal that HR logs into and employees do not — these add to the noise. PRC adds nothing to that noise.

PRC is not a platform. It is an email sequence. There is nothing to log into, nothing to download, no library to browse. It arrives in the participant's inbox on a fixed schedule and asks for a specific response. The format is the same one the participant already uses for everything else they actually do. There is no new behaviour required to access it — which is precisely why it reaches the people everything else does not.

Adding PRC does not add to your programme stack. It adds one email sequence per enrolled participant, delivered to a personal device, with no HR system involvement and no interface for anyone to manage or maintain.

What PRC adds to your stack
An email sequence
No platform. No portal. No app. No new login. No IT integration.
HR management required
None
After deployment setup, the protocol runs automatically. No ongoing HR involvement.
New behaviour required from participants
None
Reads like email. Responds like email. No platform to learn. No habit to build around accessing it.
Programmes it replaces
None
PRC sits alongside existing provision. It does not require anything else to be removed.
The short version

PRC reaches the people your EAP does not. It reports aggregate outcomes without individual exposure. It has a defined clinical off-ramp that does not disrupt existing provision. It is deployed as a performance communication, not a support offer. It adds no platform, no IT overhead, and no HR management requirement. The GDPR obligations sit with PRC Workforce, not the employer.

If the call confirms fit, procurement requires no change to any existing contract. The Pilot runs for £2,950. The downside of finding out whether it works is smaller than the weekly cost of one pattern running unchecked.

Ready to cover the rest on a call. 30 minutes. Jon personally. No obligation.