The Girls' Day School Trust is moving all of its staff, including teachers, to performance-related pay, its chief executive told a Civil Society Media conference earlier this week.

Helen Fraser told delegates at this week’s inaugural People and Culture Conference that: “Everybody will be on new pay structure that is performance related.”

In most education settings teachers expect an automatic pay rise every year and she said that it “had been a real culture shift” for the charity. Another delegate said that they believed around one-fifth of the charity sector used performance-related pay structures.

She said it had taken the charity had introduced it gradually and that it had taken about five years to get to this point. The charity employs nearly 4,000 people across the country.

She added that it was designed to ensure that heads of departments were being encouraged to “performance manage” their staff.

Fraser said the move was part of the charity’s values driven culture which has a focus on “putting the girls first”. And that if a teacher is not doing their job “the girls don’t get a second chance”.

She said that performance management was not just about pay: “It is the fact that somebody has given you that rating. There is something about being labelled that is really personal.”

GDST’s three other values are: being bold, being principled and being networked.

• In July’s issue of Charity Finance Helen Fraser wrote an article explaining how the charity had arrived at its four new values. Online subscribers can read it here. Click here for more information about subscription packages.