Culture Amp

When Jennifer joined Blueprint Medicine in 2019, the company had just over 200 employees and was rapidly expanding. In the past four years, their headcount has grown 300%. Upon Jennifer’s arrival, there were a number of thoughtful learning and development programs in place – but there wasn’t a streamlined system to guide managers or employees along their career development journeys. Instead, employees completed performance reviews and development plans in Microsoft Word and emailed documents to their managers. Managers then relayed those documents to HR reps, who stored them in personnel files. Files tended to get buried beneath the day-to-day shuffle of a fast-paced work environment and were seldom referenced throughout the year.…

Blueprint Medicines is a precision therapy company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 2006, the biotech company is advancing multiple programs for systemic mastocytosis, genomically defined cancers, and cancer immunotherapy that are designed to help patients live longer, happier lives. They believe that patients deserve treatment advances that go beyond incremental progress, and patient care can be transformed through better science. Jennifer Shevlin is the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Blueprint Medicines. After first joining the company as an HR business partner (HRBP), Jennifer now leads three of the company’s teams: HRBP, Learning & Development, and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I).

According to Jennifer, the Develop tool has encouraged greater levels of employee motivation and support for career development overall. This bears out in the results of Blueprint’s employee engagement surveys, which show employees are responding well to the learning and development programs: 93% positive score for, “I am proud to work for Blueprint.” 88% positive score for, “I know what I need to do to be successful in my role.” 80% positive score for, “My manager has shown a genuine interest in my career aspirations and actively supports me in pursuing my career goals." 80% positive score for, "My manager provides me with useful feedback about what's working well and how I can improve." Now, many employees complete self-reflections to actively shar…

In 2018 Brownes Dairy implemented its first iteration of digital performance management via its existing HRIS system. Prior to that, it was all paper and discussion-based. At the time, it made sense to use the existing platform to maintain familiarity for users, but it was soon evident the functionality wasn’t aligned with Brownes’ organisational ambitions. “We were having some issues. The system was clunky, people were losing data, we had workflow issues, there was a lack of reporting, it was not fit for purpose. The employee experience meant we didn’t have buy-in from staff,” explained David. Engagement was done through a static survey tool, without rigorous reporting or anything to benchmark results against.…

Switching on Culture Amp was transformational for Brownes Dairy, instantly giving its leaders real-time, actionable insights into how employees are feeling. “It’s an awesome framework to lean into,” said Natalie. The addition of Performance across office-based teams really kicked things into gear. With Culture Amp’s encouragement, Brownes established a consistent feedback loop that provided more opportunity for the company to proactively address the needs of people at all levels of the organisation. Brownes kept the implementation process simple using email and existing workplace communication platforms to encourage participation.…

As a direct result of the insights they gain from Culture Amp tools, Brownes Dairy has delivered: 20% Increase participation in employee feedback initiatives Saving two days per week with dynamic, objective and simple performance reviews Increased organisational responsiveness driving a people-first culture Meaningful conversations with managers

Lycopodium was going through a rapid growth phase and recognised a critical need to build the people systems to support this. The organisation had limited digital systems in place to support its rapidly-expanding headcount. Instead, Jon and his team were reliant on highly manual, paper-based processes and were working without a HRIS, consistent review process, or a way to capture feedback at scale. With an almost tripled headcount, they were eager for a solution. “We needed an employee experience platform that could handle feedback coming from anywhere and anyone.…

Lycopodium implemented three Culture Amp modules: Engage, Perform, and Develop. These three modules gave the organisation a centralised, coherent system it needed to engage its people, manage their performance and develop their careers. Internally, Jon’s team positioned Culture Amp as a tool that would make people's working lives easier, and trusted managers to use it in the way that made most sense for their management style and employees’ goals. Rather than mandating adoption, Jon took a more organic approach. Development plans and 1:1s were available but not required, and managers could run meetings in the system or offline. The idea was that wins from early adopters would influence others to try the tools out for themselves.…

Four years of investing in how Lycopodium listens, manages performance, and supports development has reshaped the employee experience. What started as replacing paper-based processes has become a system that helps people see results quickly, have better conversations, and keep growing together. There were immediate wins across the organisation: Leaders receive engagement survey results within days of a survey closing, replacing years of guesswork. Calibration sessions that once took weeks on paper can be wrapped up within a day or two of the performance cycle closing. People & Culture and managers are free to focus on having conversations rather than the administrative tasks that once monopolised their time.…

Before partnering with Culture Amp, Moorabool Shire Council relied on legacy survey tools distributed once every two years using SurveyMonkey. This point-in-time approach lacked an overarching engagement strategy, creating a cycle where data was gathered, reviewed by management, and rarely spoken about or acted upon. Over time, this created deep-seated "lack of action fatigue" across the organisation, severely eroding workforce trust. "Trust was our biggest barrier. Moorabool had a history of culture surveys [via SurveyMonkey] that were completed, results presented to management and then no action taken.…

In 2022, Moorabool transitioned to Culture Amp Engage to establish a continuous, secure listening strategy. To dismantle lack of action fatigue, the team prioritised total transparency and strict data privacy, utilising Culture Amp's strict privacy features to assure staff that their responses were entirely confidential and anonymous. To bridge the digital literacy divide, the OD team launched a hands-on, face-to-face outreach initiative. Instead of relying on noisy internal digital channels that field workers often miss, the team physically took laptops and tablets out to depots and operational sites. They attended team meetings at 7:00 a.m., sponsored coffee trucks, and provided food to make participation engaging and low-pressure.…

By connecting culture, performance, and practical AI support, Moorabool Shire Council has achieved excellent organisational growth: Surpassing Participation Benchmarks: Through targeted on-site accessibility support, survey participation rates climbed dramatically from 69% to 81% , reflecting an employee base that now trusts their voice will lead to change. Strengthening Leader Perceptions and Minimising Variance: In the 2022 baseline survey, the general perception of how leaders showed up and how they were viewed by people was initially strong, yet the data highlighted key demographic gaps with up to a 50% variance at the team level .…

In 2019, Tonkin + Taylor reviewed their performance management system, following a strategic reorganisation and realignment. From the data it became clear that while employees understood the process of evaluation, they were not clear on how they were being evaluated. "As simple as it seems, the problem was we never told people what ‘good performance’ actually looks like,” said Kavita. “We needed managers and employees to understand performance isn’t a fixed state you’re stuck in forever. It’s a dynamic process that revolves around feedback – and an evaluation process should give individuals an active voice.…

The business case for investment in Culture Amp focused on the three Es – engagement, experience, and effectiveness – and how they work together to drive business performance in a meaningful way. “We showed leaders across our organization how partnering with Culture Amp would make everyone’s work not only better, but easier. Having dynamic, authentic feedback conversations isn’t something that’s just nice to do or good for HR. It’s business critical.” - Kavita Khanna, Executive Leader of People + Workplace Culture Amp set Kavita’s team up with a customer success coach that got to know Tonkin + Taylor as an organisation.…

Since partnering with Culture Amp, individuals across Tonkin + Taylor have forged a deeper understanding of their performance goals and expectations. Plus, there’s been a marked upswing in the way teams use quality feedback to drive professional growth. Some notable wins include: 88% participation in the performance cycle, with features like Culture Amp’s continuous feedback tool and 1-on-1s integrated seamlessly across Tonkin + Taylor’s performance management system. 60% engagement with Culture Amp’s continuous feedback tool in the last 12 months, with most of the Tonkin + Taylor team using it to quickly draft and send performance notes.…

Prior to implementing Culture Amp, Wave relied on paper feedback forms for annual performance reviews. Throughout the year, employees often misplaced their notes or couldn’t recall major milestones, leaving them with few insights to add. While managers and employees regularly exchanged praise, Wave didn’t have a systematic way to track it. As a result, managers struggled to conduct fully informed performance reviews that accurately reflected employee achievements. "There was no easy way to audit an employee's performance or look at common themes.…

Wave understood that facilitating meaningful feedback was not only in sync with its core values, it was critical to creating a high-performance culture that would move the company forward. With a single, integrated system, employees could engage in meaningful conversations with managers, find purpose in how their work connected to company goals, and drive performance across the organization. To get started, Wave used Culture Amp’s Goal Management feature to set objectives for the performance year and offer greater clarity to employees, managers, and leadership teams. For simplified, technology-forward 1-on-1s , Mandy and her team turned to Culture Amp’s ​​ performance management tools .…

With Culture Amp, Wave built a high-performance culture that empowers employees to speak up, define their own goals, and grow to be top performers. The new culture marked an organizational change, but had significant impact on individual performance, as well. For instance, one employee, who had long demonstrated Wave’s values, struggled with confidence and anxiety, affecting their performance. Through thoughtful 1-on-1s that pinpointed areas of development and continuous, specific feedback, the employee made personal and professional breakthroughs and was ultimately promoted. "We’ve set our performance goals in Culture Amp, so we know where we’re going. And we know the way to get there is by creating more open, transparent, and honest feedback.…