Pitney Bowes manages a diverse frontline workforce across warehouse and operational environments. Many employees spend their shifts away from computers, have limited access to company communication systems, and speak languages other than English as their first language.
To understand the experiences of these employees, Pitney Bowes needed a feedback approach that was accessible, frequent, anonymous, and designed around the realities of frontline work.
Industry: Shipping, mailing, and logistics
Company Size: 10,000+ employees
The Challenge: Understanding employees who are difficult to reach
Frontline managers often oversee dozens of employees at once, making regular individual conversations difficult. In busy warehouse environments, employees may not have access to a computer or enough time during their shifts to complete lengthy surveys.
Language differences create an additional barrier. When surveys and workplace communication are available only in English, important concerns may remain unheard.
Fritz Aldrine, Vice President of Employee Relations at Pitney Bowes, explained the challenge:
“Obtaining feedback from frontline employees presents certain obstacles, such as limited access to technology in their working environment and a lack of time due to their busy schedules.”
Trust was another concern. Employees could be reluctant to share honest feedback about sensitive topics, including workplace harassment or discrimination, if they believed their identity might be revealed.
Annual surveys offered some insight, but the results could quickly become outdated. Pitney Bowes needed a faster and more consistent way to understand what employees were experiencing.
The Strategic Shift: From annual surveys to frequent mobile feedback
Pitney Bowes introduced Butterfly Employee Intelligence by Engagedly to make feedback more convenient and accessible for frontline employees.
Short pulse surveys are sent directly to employees through their mobile devices every two weeks. Each survey takes approximately 50 seconds to complete, and employees have seven days to respond from work or home.
The approach gives employees:
- A convenient way to share feedback from a mobile device
- The freedom to respond at a suitable time
- The option to provide feedback anonymously
- Questions and communication in their preferred language
- More frequent opportunities to raise concerns
For Pitney Bowes, this created a continuous view of employee sentiment rather than a single annual snapshot.
The Impact: Giving Every Employee a Voice
Multilingual access has been central to the success of the program.
Kim Tarpey, Senior Employee Experience Leader at Pitney Bowes, shared:
“We value the diversity of our workforce and recognize the unique challenges it presents.”
Through Butterfly Employee Intelligence, employees can read and respond to questions in their preferred language. This has made the feedback process more inclusive and helped Pitney Bowes better understand the experiences of its multilingual workforce.
Anonymous responses have also encouraged employees to speak more openly about workplace concerns. Leaders can identify recurring issues and compare sentiment across teams, departments, and locations without exposing individual employees.
The result is a more representative view of the frontline experience and a clearer understanding of where action is needed.
Turning Feedback Into Operational Action
Pitney Bowes did not treat employee feedback as information to be collected and filed away. Leaders used the findings to identify management concerns, make operational changes, and respond to workload issues.
At one site, feedback revealed unresolved concerns involving production leadership. Pitney Bowes responded by placing greater emphasis on:
- Conflict management
- Employee motivation
- Critical thinking
- Emotional intelligence
- Leadership effectiveness
Feedback at the same site also indicated that a change in operational leadership and supporting processes was necessary.
Tarpey explained:
“In one of our sites, the feedback results showed the need for an Operation Manager to be replaced and some process changes to be made. Once these actions were taken, we saw a 19% increase in units per hour within a period of 30 days.”
This demonstrated a direct connection between listening to employees, acting on their concerns, and improving operational performance.
Measurable Outcomes
The new feedback approach produced meaningful workforce and business results:
- 19% increase in units per hour: One site achieved this improvement within 30 days of making leadership and process changes informed by employee feedback.
- Feedback collected every two weeks: Frequent surveys replaced reliance on outdated annual insights.
- Approximately 50 seconds per survey: The short format made participation practical for busy frontline employees.
- Seven day response window: Employees could respond when it was convenient, whether at work or at home.
- Greater frontline engagement: More employees raised unresolved concerns involving production leadership.
- More inclusive participation: Employees could read and answer questions in their preferred language.
- Faster identification of concerns: Leaders could recognize workforce and operational issues before they became more serious.
Cultural and Operational Impact
The insights also helped Pitney Bowes identify concerns about employee workloads and shift structures.
Because the organization detected these issues early, leaders could introduce a new scheduling option. According to Aldrine, the change reduced instances where employees arrived without enough work and increased the number of units processed during the second and third shifts and later in the week.
The shift introduced:
- More frequent visibility into employee sentiment
- Greater confidence in sharing sensitive feedback
- Stronger communication across language differences
- Faster responses to management concerns
- Scheduling decisions informed by employee experiences
- A clearer connection between engagement and productivity
Pitney Bowes moved from periodically measuring employee sentiment to using frontline feedback as an ongoing source of operational insight.
What This Means for Frontline Leaders
Traditional annual surveys often fail to capture how quickly frontline working conditions can change. By the time the findings reach leadership, the issue may have already affected engagement, retention, or productivity.
Pitney Bowes created a faster feedback cycle by making surveys short, mobile, multilingual, and anonymous. More importantly, the organization acted on what employees shared.
The result was not simply better survey participation. It was stronger employee trust, more informed leadership decisions, improved scheduling, and a measurable increase in productivity.
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