New Culture Amp research tracking 1,800 companies reveals a discrete measurable state of Peak Performance associated with a 36% share price increase over two years.
Launched today and redefining the connection between engagement and performance, Culture Amp’s new Performance Culture Quadrant equips leaders with science-backed steps to build high-performing cultures that deliver consistent business results.
MELBOURNE, Australia and NEW YORK and LONDON, March 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Culture Amp, the world’s leading employee experience platform, today reveals the next evolution in engagement and performance measurement. Built on more than 15 years of People Science research and expertise, the Performance Culture Quadrant (PCQ) connects engagement with performance confidence, offering a fundamental change to the way organizations can design and deliver high performance cultures.
The ROI on culture, quantified
For decades, business leaders have treated engagement and performance as competing priorities, investing in employee engagement during growth periods, then pivoting to hard performance metrics during downturns. New research from Culture Amp suggests this perceived tradeoff is leaving significant shareholder value on the table.
A broad study tracked 1,800 organizations globally over two years and found that about two in five companies were in a cultural state identified as ‘Peak Performance’: high engagement and high performance confidence (2023-2024).
Share price movement was then tracked across a subset of listed companies and found that those in Peak Performance saw a 25% increase in share price in just one year, and a 36% increase total at the two-year mark. Compared to companies in other culture states, organizations achieving Peak Performance through a dual focus on both workplace culture and organizational performance delivered a 47% share price change advantage.
“As leaders globally face mounting pressure to demonstrate ROI on people investments, many have responded by treating culture and performance as an either-or decision,” said Caroline Rawlinson, CEO at Culture Amp. “This research provides hard evidence that this is a false dichotomy. Culture and high performance are intimately linked as culture underpins all elements of business performance where humans are involved.”
Based on levels of Workplace Engagement (the relationship employees have with their work and organization) and Performance Confidence (employees’ confidence in organizational success), the four distinct culture states identified in the research include:
- Peak Performance (high engagement, high performance confidence),
- Engaged Skepticism (high engagement, low performance confidence),
- Strained (low engagement, high performance confidence), and
- Disconnected (low engagement, low performance confidence).
“Peak Performance isn’t a cultural unicorn, nor the result of a few heroic high performing employees. Rather, it’s a distinct, measurable state you can systematically work toward,” says Amy Lavoie, VP, People Science at Culture Amp. “Forty-four percent of the Culture Amp customers included in the study have achieved Peak Performance, which means it is an achievable cultural state.”
Culture is the Operating System fuelling sustainable high performance
The research arrives as organizations face competing pressures: adopt AI, upskill workforces, strengthen performance, all under tightening budgets. 96% of C-suite leaders expect AI to boost output, yet 77% of employees report that AI tools have increased their workload as key indicators of employee experience continue to trend downward (Upwork 2024; Culture Amp 2025). So when teams are pushed to do more with less, many leaders assume investing in employee engagement is a luxury.
“Culture is the fundamental operating system that governs how decisions are made, which behaviors are reinforced, and ultimately how people perform,” explains Rawlinson. “This research demonstrates that preserving and investing in culture is the strategic unlock that enables sustainable high performance. It’s how organizations build the conditions under which teams can consistently deliver their best work, and capture measurable financial returns. Culture Amp provides the CultureOS™ for organizations wanting a tangible way to prioritise culture, performance and engagement consistently together.”
“People leaders have been advocating for culture investment for years, often without the financial data to justify it in board conversations,” adds Lavoie. “This research changes that dynamic. We can now point to a quantifiable premium that engagement-performance integration delivers.”
Integrating engagement and performance: Introducing Culture Amp’s Performance Culture Quadrant
Available within the Culture Amp platform from today, the Performance Culture Quadrant (PCQ) materially advances organizations’ ability to design and deliver high performance cultures.
Building on the foundations of 15+ years of People Science research and utilizing AI, the science-backed diagnostic provides a data-driven visualization of a company’s unique culture type, allowing leaders to definitively answer the question, “Do we have a high-performing culture?”
“The PCQ shifted the conversation from ‘how do we fix engagement’ to ‘how do we get to a Peak Performance Culture.’ That shift has been powerful, creating stronger focus and engagement among leaders” said Sam Valentine, Head of Employee Performance and Experience at Miro.
To progress from diagnosis to impact, Culture Amp’s powerful AI Coach helps organizations interpret their results and pinpoint specific growth areas, such as strengthening strategic clarity or building stronger team accountability. It then delivers personalized action plans to help organizations fine-tune their CultureOS to unlock sustainable high performance and drive results – without risking employee engagement or attrition.
“The Performance Culture Quadrant has dramatically accelerated how quickly we’re able to work through these topics and have the right conversations,” confirms Valentine.
The Performance Culture Quadrant helps organizations:
- Connect culture to business success:Â Transform employee sentiment into predictors of hard business drivers like retention, productivity, and operational efficiency.
- Diagnose their performance culture:Â Finally answer the question, “Do we have a high performing culture?” and understand their unique culture type: Peak Performance, Engaged Skepticism, Strained, or Disconnected.
- Build a roadmap to Peak Performance with targeted recommendations for action:Â Culture Amp’s AI Coach turns culture diagnosis into action by guiding organizations on a unique path to peak performance, focusing on high-impact growth areas specific to their culture type.
- Tailor roadmaps for specific departments and teams: Culture Amp’s demographic capability guides every leader to move their specific part of the organization to Peak Performance.
Availability
The Performance Culture Quadrant and Diagnostic survey tool are now available to all Engage customers, with guided insights and recommendations provided within the platform by Culture Amp’s AI Coach.
For more information, visit http://www.cultureamp.com/platform/engage/performance-culture-quadrant
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About Culture Amp
Culture Amp helps organizations assess the readiness of their culture to achieve high performance and act with confidence in an AI-driven world. Powered by 15 years of People Science research and drawing on more than 1.5 billion data points, Culture Amp acts as an always-on intelligence layer, called the CultureOS™, that connects engagement, performance, employee experience and culture data into a single unified platform. Today, 25 million employees across 6,800+ organizations, including Canva, On, Asana, Dolby, McDonald’s, and Nasdaq, depend on Culture Amp to drive culture-led performance as work and technology rapidly evolve.
About the Research
The study analyzed data from Culture Amp’s workplace dataset of over 1.5 billion employee responses, examining 1,800 companies who met required proxy items for the study. Researchers compared Culture Amp engagement and performance metrics against a subset of companies with publicly available share price data over 2023-2025.
The Performance Culture diagnostic survey draws on a comprehensive review of ~50 years of academic research including meta-analyses, academic papers, and professional best practices examining the relationship between workplace culture, individual performance, and organizational outcomes.
Developing the full diagnostic survey also involved drawing upon established psychological and organizational behavior theories – such as Goal-Setting Theory, Self-Determination Theory, and Psychological Safety Theory – which deeply informed the development of the product and survey dimensions.
SOURCE Culture Amp