How GoCardless “Makes It Happen” With Lattice: 100% Goal Attainment, 30% Higher Company Confidence, and More

TL;DR: In February 2025 GoCardless reported a 38% increase in annual revenue for the previous financial year. It achieved this through the pursuit of high-performance across every aspect of the business. Nowhere was this more impactful than in its people programmes. In just 12 months with Lattice by its side, GoCardless witnessed a 30% uptick in company confidence, 100% goal attainment, and market-beating levels of employee engagement.

Introduction

GoCardless is building the world’s bank payment network. As the company grows, its focus is on sustaining an inclusive, high-performance culture, so every aspect of its people programme must support this.

Alan Cairns, chief people officer of GoCardless, believes ambitious and talented people will help it become a global market leader. With Lattice powering the company’s performance, engagement, and goals, its people are more invested in GoCardless's vision than ever before.

The Challenge

Life at GoCardless is focussed on continuous learning and development. Everyone is empowered to take ownership of their career and performance while also prioritising wellbeing and work-life balance. However, sustaining this culture was difficult due to an overreliance on manual processes and platforms that were not built in the way a high-performance people strategy demands. As a result of a headcount reduction, its company confidence score sat at just 46%, performance reviews only had a 62% response rate, and goal achievement was falling short.

“We’ve experienced rapid people growth in the last few years, but the tools we were using to support them could not match that velocity,” remarks Alan. “We went to market to find a platform rooted in performance. One that would help us attract and retain talented people, with the right tools all in one place.

Making It Happen

“Then we found Lattice,” says Alan. “Lattice is better than its competitors.It feels like it was made for us. Everything is rooted in building a high-performance culture and raising the bar year-on-year.”

One of GoCardless’s most powerful values is “Make It Happen.” Achieving this requires everyone to work with urgency, taking personal accountability for getting things done in pursuit of company vision. Accountability and empowerment require transparency, open communication, and being able to see the impact of individual achievement on collective success.

With Lattice, GoCardless achieves this in several ways:

1. ‍Performance reviews are tailored to the company: GoCardlesshas gone from four reviews per year with just a 62% employee participation rate, to bi-annual reviews with 100% participation. Reviews are designed to incentivise managers and deliver a 360-degree view of an employee’s experience and performance.
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2. Goals align around what matters most: With a mish mash of spreadsheets, docs and tools, GoCardless was unable to provide a clear line of sight from individual achievement to organisational success. Now it can.
   
   Goals are nested, standardised, and are calibrated for continuous improvement. Everyone has at least one goal in Lattice; they can see how goals tie together and how they fit into the bigger picture. Most importantly, just one year after implementation, GoCardless has achieved 100% goal setting within Lattice.
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3. ‍A continuous feedback culture: Alan describes feedback as “occurring organically,” with 75% of staff regularly utilising the feedback features in Lattice — including public praise via Slack integration. GoCardless can now link feedback to values, which Alan says is a “simple yet incredibly effective feature.”
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4. ‍Taking the pulse of their people: GoCardless wants to support as many people as possible to become high performers. To do this they must dig deep into the employee experience and use this knowledge to drive continuous people programme improvement. Engagement and pulse surveys are delivering the metrics and insights needed to continuously improve performance, spotlight anyissues that stand in the way of success, raise the culture bar, and improve retention rates. As a result, employee confidence in GoCardless increased from 46% to 75%.

“Everyone at GoCardless talks about “making it happen.” Thanks to Lattice and its combination of highly customisable tools that work seamlessly together to drive high-performance, we can see how our people programmes are directly impacting business success,” says Alan.

Impact of Lattice

Lattice is now an integral part of the GoCardless people experience. It’s made a transformational difference to this fast-growth business in a very short space of time – 100% goal setting, 75% company confidence in a business they want to work for, 100% participation in performance reviews, and a 75% active feedback rate.

"Thanks to Lattice, everything is now tied to high performance and every action is in service to the pursuit of continuous improvement, company success, and profitability,” concludes Alan.

All that’s left now for GoCardless is to keep doubling down on the great work of its people team, to retain the collective continuous improvement mindset.