User Guide

How to launch, complete, submit, revise, and use your Foundation well in WeMatter.

Who this is for

This guide is for people completing their own Foundation.

If you are about to launch it, already partway through it, or returning to edit it after submission, this guide explains how the flow works and how to make the reflection genuinely useful.

Why Foundation matters for you

Foundation gives you a structured way to explain what is shaping your experience at work.

That includes how your current work-life rhythm feels, which workplace conditions matter most, what drives you personally, how those things may be affecting your performance, and what kind of future direction feels right from here.

The point is not to produce a polished self-description. The point is to create a usable account of what is true now, so later conversations and development work have something more substantial to build from.

Launching your Foundation

You will usually launch Foundation from your dashboard using Actions and then Launch Foundation.

In some cases, a WeMatter lead or another authorised user may launch it for you. When that happens, the live Foundation is already waiting when you open it and you can begin the reflection straight away.

Already started?

If your Foundation is already live, open it from your dashboard and continue from where you left off. The dashboard shows your progress and points to the next part that still needs attention.

Understanding the dashboard

The Foundation dashboard is the control point for the whole flow.

It shows the current state of the Foundation, the overall completion percentage, and the five-part step structure. While the reflection is still active, it also points you back to the next incomplete part. Once everything is complete, the dashboard shifts your attention towards the summary and submission stage.

That means the dashboard is not just a landing page. It is the page that tells you how far through the reflection you are and what needs to happen next.

Working through the five steps

Foundation is designed to be completed section by section rather than rushed in one sitting. You can move steadily through the steps, save your answers, and return later if needed.

Saving written answers

Written reflections do not autosave as you type. If you are editing a written response, select Save before you move on.

1. Work Life Harmony

This step asks what balance or intensity actually looks right for you.

Some people do their best work when they are all-in for periods of time. Others need firmer boundaries to stay sustainable. Foundation is not trying to impose a single model of healthy work. It is asking you to describe the version that is realistic, supportive, and effective for you.

You will reflect on how much of your waking time work currently occupies and whether that feels right, too much, or too little.

2. Professional Priorities

This step focuses on the external workplace conditions that help you do your best work. You choose the priorities that matter most to you and reflect on how well they are currently being met.

These priorities are built into the product, but they are not meant to matter equally to everyone.

Career Growth

Structured progression, stretch, and visible development opportunities.

Culture

A values-led environment where inclusion, trust, and belonging feel real.

Flexibility

Enough freedom and adaptability to make work sustainable alongside the rest of life.

Compensation

Pay, benefits, and financial security that feel fair for the contribution being made.

The app includes a wider set of priorities than these examples. Choose the ones that genuinely shape your experience, not the ones that merely sound desirable in theory.

3. Personal Drivers

Professional priorities describe the workplace around you. Personal drivers are more internal.

This step asks what genuinely motivates you at a deeper level and how those drivers shape the kind of work and life direction that feels worthwhile. In the product, you rank your drivers in order of importance and then reflect on whether they are currently being met.

Autonomy

Control, ownership, and the ability to make meaningful choices about how you work.

Balance

Enough space for relationships, commitments, and life outside work to feel protected.

Health & Wellbeing

The physical and mental conditions needed to sustain energy, focus, and resilience.

Achievement

A sense of progress, accomplishment, and professional pride in the work you do.

These are examples rather than the full set. The task is to notice what consistently moves you, not what looks most admirable on the page.

4. Current Performance

This step is not a deep self-review. It is a high-level check-in on your current performance and the factors that may be influencing it.

You rate your performance and then reflect on how your priorities and drivers being met, or not met, may be affecting the way you are currently working. This is one of the places where Foundation becomes especially useful, because it connects personal context to present reality rather than treating performance as if it exists in isolation.

5. Horizon Mapping

Horizon Mapping looks forward.

This is where you identify the opportunities or aspirations that feel important from here, whether that means greater stretch, a specific role, cross-functional exposure, skill development, or something else entirely.

Collaborative Partnership

Working more closely with someone whose perspective or skill would help you grow.

Skill Development

Building a capability, qualification, or area of expertise that matters for your next step.

Stretch Assignment

Taking on a challenge beyond your current role so your growth accelerates in practice, not just in theory.

Role Aspiration

Working towards a specific future role or direction that already feels meaningful to you.

The Horizon Mapping options in the app are broader than this sample. What matters is identifying what feels genuinely relevant now, even if the answer is still taking shape.

Reviewing the summary

When you reach the summary page, the task changes. You are no longer answering question by question. You are reading your Foundation as one coherent whole.

This is the point to ask whether it feels accurate, specific, and useful. If something sounds too vague, too polished, or no longer true to where you are, that is usually a sign to go back before you submit.

Submitting your Foundation

Submitting formalises the reflection and makes it read-only.

That matters because Foundation is meant to become a dependable reference point, not a quietly shifting draft. Once submitted, it can still be read at any time, but it must be unsubmitted before any changes are made.

After submission

A submitted Foundation remains available to read. If something genuinely needs to change, return to the summary page, unsubmit it, update the relevant section, and submit it again.

Editing after submission

If you need to revise anything later, go back to the summary page and choose Unsubmit. That reopens the Foundation for editing. You can then revisit the sections that need attention, save the updated answers, and submit again once the reflection feels right.

The important point is that changes happen through a deliberate unsubmit and resubmit cycle rather than by editing a submitted Foundation directly.

Deleting a Foundation

If a Foundation was launched in error or should no longer exist as part of the record, it can be deleted from the dashboard.

Deleting is a stronger action

Deleting removes the associated Foundation data. Use it when the reflection should no longer exist, not simply when it needs updating.

A good mindset to take

The strongest Foundations are candid rather than polished.

Try not to answer as the ideal version of yourself or the version you think someone else wants to read. Answer as you are now. That is what makes the reflection useful later, when it becomes part of your wider WeMatter journey.