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    Talent

    PAR for the course: how to help your employees deal with workplace stress

    by Rachel Lewis Published September 2, 2025 in Talent • 4 min read

    All employers want to improve workplace well-being, but struggle to ease demands on their staff. The best way to manage workplace stress is to give people the tools to help themselves. Here’s how it’s done.

    The PAR approach

    In the participatory action research (PAR) approach to reducing workplace stress, organizations create committees of employees drawn from a range of roles and levels. It is a data-driven approach in which the committees diagnose issues by gathering and analyzing data, then use the insights to design and implement appropriate interventions.

    How it works

    PAR works by ensuring that those most impacted by the organization’s problems have an active role in resolving them. This can include redesigning jobs with the explicit goal of reducing stress: by involving employees in developing their own solutions, organizations can foster employees’ ownership of the working structure and acceptance of its limitations. This collaborative approach can also produce better peer support, change management and well-being outcomes, benefiting individual workers and the business.

    Select members carefully to ensure the committee offers a range of views

    How it’s done

    PAR initiatives are not necessarily easy to implement, and organizational design can be challenging. Follow these steps to maximize successful outcomes:

    • Select members carefully to ensure the committee offers a range of views that represent the whole organization.
    • Get buy-in and support from senior leaders to give the committee the agency to implement changes.
    • Begin with focused, smaller-scale initiatives (these are more likely to encourage participation and achieve meaningful results).
    • Ensure the committee has access to strong data that confirms the nature of the issues it’s addressing and allows it to design the most appropriate responses.
    • Ensure that data collection (from workplace surveys, for example) is the first stage of the process and that it continues throughout the initiative, with the committee monitoring impacts and progress to refine aspects of the approach where the data suggests it is required.
    • Give the process time; for example, by committing to four PAR sessions over a period of several months, as follows:
      • An initial session focused on scoping
      • A second session a month later to analyze organizational data and the results of a work-demands survey, and plan actions
      • A third session after a further two months for the committee to assess progress and adjust accordingly
      • A fourth and final session to analyze a second work-demand survey, assess what the initiative has achieved, and specify next steps.
    Reducing the demands on employees is the most effective way to lower workplace stress.

    Key learning

    Broader research findings suggest that reducing the demands on employees is the most effective way to lower workplace stress. The PAR approach can help you achieve this through collective problem-solving that involves the staff most affected by heavy workloads.

    Further reading

    Stress busters: How to help employees help themselves

    Learn how to breathe well to find emotional balance

    Well-being initiatives aren’t working. Here’s how to drive real change

    Workplace Stress: Causes, Impacts And Solutions

    Authors

    Rachel Lewis

    Managing Partner at Affinity Health at Work

    Dr. Rachel Lewis is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Managing Partner at Affinity Health at Work, an award-winning consultancy dedicated to enhancing employee wellbeing through evidence-based practices. With over two decades of experience, Lewis is a leading authority in workplace health, leadership development, and psychosocial risk management.

    Alongside her consultancy work, Lewis serves as a Reader in Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. Her academic contributions include numerous publications and the development of national guidelines aimed at promoting mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. In recognition of her impactful work, she was ranked third in HR Magazine’s “HR Most Influential Thinker” list in 2023.

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