Strata Workplace Consultancy

Translating staff experience into business action.

Confidential listening. Clear insights. Practical action.

Confidential, manager-free diagnostics that surface exactly where the pressure sits inside your organisation — in culture, in management, or in process — and a leadership-ready roadmap to resolve it.

The Staff Pressure Test is a confidential, structured engagement that gives leadership honest, data-driven insight into how workplace pressure is affecting your teams — tracing what's raised back to the specific process, workflow, or operational gap behind it, not just the feelings around it.

I use confidential listening as a diagnostic tool to find the pressure points employees are facing — whether that's organisational culture, manager friction, or process pinch points.
David Palmer, Founder
Culture Manager friction Process pinch points

Four phases, start to finish — and why each one earns its place.

1

Scoping

1 week

Agree objectives, scope, and success metrics with leadership. Confidentiality terms confirmed in writing.

WHY IT MATTERS

This is where trust gets built before anyone speaks. Get it right, and the listening phase works.

2

On-site engagement

3 days

Confidential roundtables (6–8 people) and one-to-one interviews. Fully voluntary, no managers present.

WHY IT MATTERS

This is where the real signal surfaces — not the version people give in front of a manager.

3

Analysis & translation

1–2 weeks

Feedback synthesised into themes and translated into business language: retention risk, productivity, operational performance.

WHY IT MATTERS

This step turns "people are stressed" into a specific, costed business risk.

4

Leadership briefing

1 week

Findings presented live to senior leadership: key themes, risk areas, root causes, and a phased, practical roadmap.

WHY IT MATTERS

A live conversation, not just a document. Leaders get room to question findings — that's often where real buy-in happens.

Four things every engagement delivers.

Confidentiality

Employees speak freely. Feedback is thematic and never attributed to an individual.

A translation layer

We bridge the gap between employee experience and business performance — tracing pressure back to the specific process, workflow, or system causing it, not just the sentiment around it.

Actionable recommendations

Not just problems: practical, phased solutions tailored to your organisation's size, sector, and culture.

A repeatable framework

Option to run the Test annually or quarterly to track progress and measure impact over time.

Scoped to your organisation, not off a price list.

Every engagement starts with a short scoping conversation, so the format and fee reflect your organisation's size, sector, and what you actually need — not a fixed package. The Staff Pressure Test is the core offering, but scope and follow-on work can be tailored.

David Palmer

David founded Strata after 15+ years in operational and business leadership — including advising NHS Trusts on complex operations, and leading payroll and operations functions for large multinational organisations. Strata is built on three things.

Operational leadership

Over 15 years in operational and business leadership, including advising NHS Trusts on complex operations. David understands how organisations work, where pressure builds, and what leadership needs to know.

Lived experience

David has personally experienced severe workplace pressure and burnout, and rebuilt from it — giving him a genuine, first-hand understanding of what staff are going through, not just a framework for asking about it.

A translator's ear

That operational grounding and lived experience, combined with a genuine ability to listen without judgement, means employees speak honestly and leadership receives insight they can actually act on.

Confidential enquiries welcome.