Canary

the idea

make work make you well.

Most of a life is spent at work. It should restore people, not deplete them. Canary reads the earliest signs of strain in a team, while there is still time to change the work that causes it.

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An empty office with two desks, a telephone, wall calendar and pendant lamps, no one at work.
An office with no one in it, Amsterdam, 1913.

the missing metric.

what companies measure todaylagging

  1. absence
  2. burnout
  3. turnover
  4. productivity loss

what canary addsleading

  1. energy
  2. recovery
  3. workload
  4. focus
  5. work patterns

Traditional HR asks who is already struggling. Canary asks where capacity is starting to slip, and why.

silent strain

The unseen cost of a team performing below its best, whether from stress, burnout or other pressures. It is felt in the results long before it is spoken.

  1. what it is

    a gap between potential and performance

    Capable people, quietly running below capacity, with no single moment to point to.

  2. why it stays hidden

    it looks like business as usual

    Good people compensate, so the strain stays out of view until it reaches the numbers.

  3. what we do

    we give it a voice

    We read the signals early, in the context of each workplace, so there is time to act with care.

By the time it shows up as absence, turnover, sick leave or disengagement, the capacity is already gone. Canary reads the slope, team by team.

diagnose the work, not the person.

Wellness asks how to help people cope. Canary asks what is consuming their capacity, and how to redesign the work.

a closed loop.

Six steps, in order, kept in time like a crew. What the last one learns goes back into the first.

A rowing crew seen from directly above, rowing in time on dark water.
  1. 1senseLightweight employee signals plus work-system data.
  2. 2detectPersistent deviations from each team's own normal.
  3. 3explainThe likely organisational contributors.
  4. 4interveneTargeted work-design changes, recommended.
  5. 5measureHealth, productivity and quality recovery.
  6. 6learnAn evidence base of which interventions work, fed back into sensing.
Intervention plan · Product team
Illustrative

Contributors found: meeting load up 22%, focus time down 18% over three weeks.

  1. Move two recurring status meetings to async updatesTeam lead · Week 1
  2. Protect two 2-hour focus blocks a week, calendar-wideTeam · Week 1
  3. Rebalance on-call so no one covers two weeks runningEngineering manager · Week 2
Measured at the 6-week check-inSCI 61 → target 66

four things, connected.

Health, work design, productivity and economic value are usually managed separately. Canary connects them, so recovered capacity shows up in the numbers.

  1. health

    • energy
    • recovery
    • stress
    • focus

  2. work design

    • workload
    • hours
    • meetings
    • autonomy
    • staffing

  3. productivity

    • output
    • quality
    • cycle time
    • errors

  4. economic value

    • lower absence, turnover and overtime
    • better performance

what we hold true.

Five beliefs that sit under everything we say.

what we are not.

  • not a clinic
  • not an EAP
  • not a wearable
  • not a diagnosis

Clinical care is referred to partners, never delivered in-house. Individuals see themselves; employers see only anonymised team trends.

act while there is still time.

Leave your work email and your Synergist will be in touch.

or apply for the 12–16 week pilot →