Abstract
Workplace stress continues to impair employee wellbeing, yet access to organizational mental-health support remains limited. Although organizations increasingly invest in wellbeing initiatives, employees often hesitate to seek help due to stigma and limited autonomy in stress management. This study introduces the Awareness-Control Quadrant Framework, grounded in occupational health psychology which maps how employees appraise stressors (awareness) and perceive agency (control) at work. Across two phases (N = 222), we developed and evaluated a CBT-based, self-led intervention called ACE (Awareness Control Enhancement) designed to enhance emotional regulation and workplace stress coping. Results from randomized control trial show significant post intervention movement toward the desirable quadrant and reductions in stress, particularly when activities were assigned based on quadrant mapping. These findings highlight the relevance of awareness-control quadrant as a mechanism to identify workplace stress responses and demonstrate the potential of scalable, self-led interventions for enhancing organizational wellbeing.