We don’t believe in a cookie cutter approach to culture, every organisation is unique. This means we couldn’t simply plug in another system which has worked well elsewhere – we had to build it around Adaptivity’s culture which means understanding it first.

We began by co-creating a Culture Strategy, defining shared values and behaviours in a Cultural Operating System. This set the foundation for a performance framework built around learning, not ticking tasks.

Key shifts included:

• Splitting out management as a specific career track: Career progression has traditionally required employees to take on management responsibilities if they want to progress their careers. We believe this to be shortsighted and talent limiting. Employees at Adaptivity can choose to progress down a Management track or a Specialist track and both tracks can achieve the same level of progression.
  
• Role competencies themed by value: Because it is our grounding belief is that it is our culture that creates the right environment for performance, role competencies are themed by Adaptivity’s values. Additionally, to reinforce the importance of culture and teamwork, behaviours within role competencies are related to the team as well as the individual.
  
• Objectives focused on development not tasks: The aim of this framework is to enable people to grow and become better at their job. Rather than focusing our energy on What we want employees to achieve, we focus our energy on How we can help them achieve it. We flipped the priority.
  
• Regular performance check-ins: We moved away from the tradition of annual appraisals to a more agile and adaptable process that maintains an emphasis on continual learning with quarterly reviews.
  
• Bonus based on culture and results: The previous bonus system based on individual merit signalled that, ultimately, what mattered was your own performance. To ensure we were also incentivising collaboration and nurturing the right culture we made sure to the bonus to these.