Culture Amp

Your most engaged employees might also be your harshest critics. When we asked HR leaders where their own team would land, most guessed "Engaged Skepticism." High engagement, low confidence leadership can execute. These employees believe in the mission. They just aren't sure leadership can deliver. It's actually one of the most recoverable culture states out there, and the fix comes down to accountability and cross-functional alignment. Cast your vote, then see how to turn skepticism into an advantage 👇 🔗 Read the full playbook: https://lnkd.in/gZr9Ug3s

Point AI at a culture built on monitoring, and you get faster monitoring. Point it at a culture built on growth, and you get growth. AI doesn't change who you are, it just makes it undeniable. Brian Elliott breaks down this and other truths in our latest blog post: https://lnkd.in/gFiAcUcW

The HBR authors argue that a "performance-first" approach isn't about abandoning empathy. It’s about reframing care in service of outcomes. When managers shift to enabling performance rather than just protecting feelings: 📈 They are 21% more likely to deliver expected business results. 🙂 Their employees actually report higher overall satisfaction with their employee experience. This isn't a trade-off. It's a collaboration. And it sits at the absolute heart of Culture Amp’s Performance Culture Quadrant (PCQ). Read more about performance-first management from HBR: https://lnkd.in/gWnhM6n3

Only 44% of organizations crack Peak Performance. Here's what they get right. High engagement, high confidence in the business, and staying power: 76% stay there a year later. The formula comes down to leadership confidence, resource alignment, and clear communication. Peak companies have 21% more high performers, 88% retention, and up to 47% higher stock price growth over two years. Vote in our poll. Then see where your org stands 👇 🔗 Read the full playbook: https://lnkd.in/g7Ehjgqx

Experiment more with AI, they said. It'll sort itself out, they said. It hasn’t. Yet. More organizations are encouraging employees to try AI than ever, up from 76% to 80% year over year, and usage keeps climbing right along with it. By every measure, HR is leaning in. And yet belief that AI will augment jobs rather than replace them dropped from 71% to 63% this year alone. More experimenting, less confidence. Not exactly the trajectory anyone was banking on. Here's the uncomfortable part of our 2026 State of AI in HR data: trying things out isn't the same as transforming how HR works. Real change takes a deliberate plan, not just more tinkering. Our Lead Data Journalist, Heather Rose Walker, PhD, dug into the numbers and breaks them down. Check out the blog post to learn what's actually driving the gap between experimentation and transformation. https://lnkd.in/giKK8A2D

Would your company pay bail for an employee arrested at a protest? Patagonia does. In this episode, Chief People Officer Theresita Richard joins Culture Amp's Justin Angsuwat to explore how Patagonia protects its founding values while scaling to nearly 4,000 employees globally, from "liberating structures" that replace bureaucracy to a hiring approach built on alignment over fit. The bigger lesson for leaders: culture isn't a soft metric sitting apart from the business. It's the engine behind sustained performance. Watch the full episode to see how Patagonia does it. Link in comments.

Urgency is one of the worst values you can hand an AI agent. Culture Amp co-founder Didier Elzinga raised some eyebrows at Culture First Leaders Forum NA 2026 with that one. His point? The values you wrote for humans don't automatically work for machines. Tell an agent to move fast and you've basically given it permission to cut corners. Most companies call themselves AI-native. They're not. Using AI to work faster just makes you AI-assisted. AI-native means every interaction, with a customer, an employee, a system, makes the whole company smarter. Full recap, plus what to audit in your values this quarter: https://lnkd.in/ev8UwXcK

Did some napkin math this weekend. Most companies measure engagement once or twice a year. Performance once or twice a year. On different calendars, reviewed by different people, in different tools. So the "full picture" of how your company is actually doing gets assembled maybe twice a year, by hand, usually late. Everything else in the business gets a live dashboard. This gets a slide deck. Can you relate?

Leadership transitions, high-performer attrition, AI upskilling – HR teams are juggling a lot right now. 🙄 Here's how real people leaders are navigating the moments that matter most.

How do you prove culture is working? 🤔 Davida Lindsay-Bell, Chief People Officer at Hanna Andersson, has thoughts. She shares them in the latest episode of Women in Retail Talks. Davida talks presence as a leadership practice, culture as business strategy, and how the CPO role is changing. Give it a listen here: https://lnkd.in/e47kyPqb