Policy : Balance Sustainability with Speed

Commitment to Sustainable, High-Performance Engineering
We believe that speed should never come at the cost of sustainability. Rapid delivery is essential, but it must be balanced with healthy, long-term ways of working that prevent burnout, improve well-being, and ensure continued excellence.
We commit to fostering an engineering culture where teams can deliver at pace without sacrificing quality, creativity, or personal well-being. Sustainable engineering is not about working harder - it’s about working smarter, prioritising effectively, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

What This Means
Sustainable speed requires intentional practices that allow teams to move fast without overloading themselves. We focus on efficiency, prioritisation, and flexibility to ensure that engineering remains fast, but never frantic.

Our commitment to Balancing Sustainability with Speed is built on:

• Realistic Workloads & Prioritisation – We ensure that teams work on the most valuable and impactful tasks, rather than spreading efforts too thin.
• Healthy, Predictable Delivery Cadence – We avoid last-minute crunch, unnecessary heroics, and unrealistic deadlines, focusing instead on continuous, sustainable flow.
• Flexible Working & Well-Being Support – We support remote work, flexible hours, and time off to enable engineers to maintain mental clarity, focus, and well-being.
• Long-Term Thinking & Technical Sustainability – We invest in quality, automation, and maintainability, preventing short-term speed from creating long-term technical debt.
• Psychologically Safe Work Environments – Engineers feel safe to set boundaries, push back on unrealistic expectations, and advocate for sustainable delivery practices.

Why This Matters
Engineering teams that operate at unsustainable speeds eventually face burnout, quality issues, and decreased productivity. By balancing sustainability with speed, we:

• Improve long-term productivity by ensuring engineers stay engaged, focused, and motivated.
• Deliver consistently high-quality work without resorting to unsustainable "crunch" cycles.
• Create a work environment where engineers feel valued, respected, and able to do their best work. Ensure that technical health is prioritised alongside business outcomes, preventing the accumulation of tech debt.

Our Expectation
All teams must prioritise sustainable delivery practices, avoiding burnout and overwork. Leaders must model and encourage healthy work habits, ensuring that speed is achieved through efficiency, not excessive effort.

To support this policy, workload management strategies, well-being initiatives, and technical sustainability measures will be embedded into our engineering processes, ensuring that teams maintain high velocity without sacrificing long-term success. By making sustainable speed a fundamental principle, we create a resilient, high-performing engineering culture - delivering Better Value Sooner Safer Happier.

This policy reinforces long-term engineering success, well-being, and quality delivery at pace.