Published 10 Feb 2025
GENOMICS has always had a strong sense of culture and community - you can feel it the moment you walk through the door. I felt it on my first day, and it’s a big part of why people join and why they stay. But until now, we’ve never taken the time to put into words what truly makes us us.
We’ve reached a pivotal moment in our growth. With over a third of our team joining in the past year and our teams evolving rapidly, we knew it was time to define our culture, not just to capture who we are today, but to be intentional about the future we want to build.
How did we do it?
For our values to be truly meaningful, they had to be authentic representing voices from across the company, from new hires to long-standing team members at GENOMICS.
We started with a company-wide survey (85% participation!) to understand what makes GENOMICS special, what we should protect, and what could be holding us back.
We then held discovery sessions, with over 60 team members across different levels and departments, including our senior leadership team. These sessions weren’t just about collecting words, they were about real stories of our culture in action, building on our findings in the survey. It was both insightful and inspiring to hear examples of how our culture helps us succeed today:
“There’s a real willingness to help others - it feels like we’re all in it together.”
“I feel empowered to speak up and suggest improvements without fear of blame.”
And the focus areas that would lead us to success as we grow:
“We need to move faster in areas where we excel and avoid distractions.”
“We should be more ambitious and challenge ourselves more"
At this stage, we were ready to bring together every comment, insight, and story to shape our first draft of company values and statements. With these in hand, we worked closely with our CEO and Founder, Peter Donnelly, and our COO and President, David Thornton, to refine them further ensuring they were fully aligned with where we’re heading as a company.
When everything came together, one thing was clear: we were already aligned. The same themes and sentiments had surfaced consistently across all levels of the business.
Our company values
We landed on five values that capture what makes GENOMICS special today, whilst setting the bar for our future.
- Deliver — for individual and population health
- Commercially focused — built on a foundation of world-leading science
- Act with ambition, agility, and ownership
- Communicate with clarity and transparency
- Trust and help others — ensuring that both individual effort and teamwork drive shared success
These values define who we are, who we want to be, and how we work together. Click here to learn more about our values.
The launch
At our recent Winter offsite, Peter Donnelly, our CEO/Founder, and our Chief People Officer, Sneha Bakshi, introduced our values for the first time. They walked everyone through the journey - how we got here, what we heard, and why this matters for our future.
To bring the values to life, we didn’t just present them, we put them into action. Everyone received values postcards, with space to recognise a colleague or team who truly embodies them.Around 80 cards were submitted, with nominations that represented all five values. It was great to see the values being recognised straight away, with so many colleagues and teams already living them in their day-to-day work.
What's next?
Now, the real work begins: embedding these values into everything we do. That means integrating them into hiring, performance, and how we collaborate, so they become second nature in the way we operate.
As Peter Donnelly put it at the Offsite:
“Our culture has always been a huge part of who we are. Now, with these values, we have a shared language to protect, strengthen, and evolve it as we grow.”
This is just the beginning. These values belong to all of us, and together, we’ll make sure they shape the way we work every day.