The foundation your wellbeing provision is missing.
Organisations have never invested more in employee wellbeing, yet stress and burnout are still at epidemic levels. The financial and human costs continue to rise.
The cost of getting it wrong
Stress and burnout are rising, and so is the bill.
The problem
Your nervous system is running everything. Yet nobody taught you how it works.
Organisations invest in counselling, resilience training, mindfulness and EAPs. These are valuable, but they work top-down: brain to body. They do not address the physiological layer that determines how you reason, decide, regulate emotion and perform under pressure: the nervous system.
None of these tools are wrong, but we are trying to think our way out of a physiological problem. Top-down strategies lose their grip once the nervous system is dysregulated. Regulation must run bottom-up, body to brain, first. We already have the tools; they are simply state-dependent, and most people cannot identify their state.
BaseState addresses that foundation, and the duty-of-care obligations in HSE’s Management Standards, ISO 45003, and (for FCA firms) SM&CR conduct risk.
“BaseState doesn’t compete with existing wellbeing provision. It unlocks it.”
The framework
Signal. State. Strategy.
BaseState is nervous system intelligence: the foundational knowledge of how your nervous system works, and a framework rooted in existing neuroscience to recognise and regulate your state, in the moment and over time.
The framework follows a simple sequence (Signal, State, Strategy) that allows individuals to use that knowledge to identify their state and take appropriate action.
This is not about doing less. It is about giving your people something they have never been taught: the knowledge to read their own nervous system.
Signal.
Notice what your body is telling you.
State.
Identify the state you are in.
Strategy.
Take the action that fits that state.
What we’re proposing
A pilot designed around your people.
We offer a range of formats: an introductory workshop, a half-day session, or a bespoke programme shaped around your team. We manage design and facilitation; you provide the venue and the people.
Introductory workshop
A first look at how the nervous system shapes performance under pressure.
Half-day session
The full Signal. State. Strategy. framework, with practical tools to take away.
Bespoke programme
Designed around your team, your context and your priorities.
Ready to talk?
Email katie@basestate.health to arrange a 20-minute call.
The founders
Built from lived experience. Grounded in corporate reality.
Founded by senior financial services and IT leaders with decades of experience delivering, leading and navigating transformation, change and high-pressure environments.
Colette McLean
20 years senior leadership in financial services change delivery and transformation. Colette built the framework and is now bringing it to the organisations she knows from the inside.
Katie Docherty
Former COO and CIO, with 20+ years leading operations, technology and regulatory change across FTSE-listed and tier-1 financial services. Co-founded BaseState to bring this knowledge to those who need it most.