Backcountry is an outdoor retailer serving customers through its ecommerce business and warehouse operations. At its Utah warehouse, understanding the experiences of frontline employees was essential to maintaining an effective work environment and reliable order fulfillment.
However, gathering feedback consistently was difficult. Managers lacked a clear way to determine whether concerns were limited to individual teams or shifts, or whether they pointed to larger issues requiring organization wide action.
Industry: Outdoor retail and ecommerce
Company Size: 800+ employees
Product used: Engagedly Surveys
The Challenge: A fragmented view of the frontline experience
Without a streamlined feedback process, Backcountry struggled to build a complete picture of its warehouse environment.
Managers received concerns through different channels and at different times. This made it difficult to identify patterns, separate isolated incidents from widespread problems, and respond before issues affected employees or operations.
The communication gaps created several challenges:
- Employee concerns could remain unresolved
- Managers lacked consistent insight across shifts
- Workplace patterns were difficult to identify
- Decisions often depended on incomplete information
- Operational issues could take longer to address
Backcountry needed a more structured way to listen to employees and translate their feedback into practical decisions.
The Strategic Shift: From intuition to structured workforce insights
Backcountry introduced Engagedly Surveys to collect employee feedback more consistently and give managers a clearer view of the workforce experience.
Although the platform was initially met with some skepticism, managers soon found that the survey data helped them answer an important question: Was an issue limited to a particular shift, or was it part of a broader organizational pattern?
This clarity allowed managers to move beyond assumptions and use employee feedback to guide decisions.
The surveys uncovered concerns ranging from relatively simple workplace issues to more significant organizational gaps, including:
- Facility maintenance needs
- Shift specific concerns
- Management and process issues
- Gaps in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts
- Broader workplace experience challenges
With clearer information, Backcountry could focus its attention and resources where they would make the greatest difference.
The Impact: Turning Feedback Into Operational Clarity
The platform gave Backcountry a more reliable way to understand what was happening across teams and shifts.
Instead of treating every concern as an isolated issue, managers could examine patterns in the feedback. This helped them recognize which problems required a local response and which called for broader changes.
The shift introduced:
- A consistent method for gathering employee feedback
- Better visibility into concerns across warehouse shifts
- Clearer distinctions between specific and systemic issues
- More informed decisions about workplace improvements
- Faster responses to employee and operational concerns
Survey insights became a practical management resource, helping leaders refine processes and create a more consistent work environment.
Higher Productivity at the Utah Warehouse
The operational value of this approach became especially clear during weekend shifts at Backcountry’s Utah warehouse.
Employee insights helped managers identify where processes and working conditions could be improved. Once those insights were translated into targeted changes, productivity increased during the weekend shifts.
The improvements contributed to:
- More streamlined warehouse operations
- Better order fulfillment
- More focused management decisions
- Stronger alignment between employee needs and operational priorities
Rather than making broad changes based on assumptions, Backcountry could target the areas that employees and survey patterns showed needed attention.
Operational Outcomes
Engagedly delivered meaningful results across Backcountry’s warehouse operations:
- Clearer workforce insights: Managers could determine whether concerns were limited to particular shifts or reflected broader workplace issues.
- Improved weekend productivity: Targeted changes contributed to stronger performance during weekend shifts at the Utah warehouse.
- More efficient order fulfillment: Better operational decisions helped streamline warehouse processes.
- Faster issue identification: Survey findings brought attention to concerns before they became more disruptive.
- More informed workplace improvements: Feedback guided changes ranging from facility maintenance to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
- Simpler feedback collection: Employees could submit feedback through an intuitive and accessible survey experience.
- Stronger management decisions: Leaders gained structured data to support decisions that previously depended on intuition or fragmented information.
Cultural and Operational Impact
The value of Engagedly extended beyond warehouse productivity.
Managers appreciated the simplicity of the platform, while employees found it easy to submit feedback. This reduced friction in the feedback process and helped Backcountry develop a clearer understanding of its work environment.
By listening more systematically, Backcountry could respond to small concerns while also identifying deeper organizational patterns.
The result was a more responsive approach to workforce management, where employee feedback informed both immediate operational changes and broader workplace priorities.
Engagedly brought structure to a previously fragmented process, helping Backcountry replace assumptions with evidence and turn workforce insights into action.
What This Means for Retail and Warehouse Leaders
In warehouse environments, operational performance and employee experience are closely connected. When leaders cannot see how employees experience different shifts, teams, or facilities, important concerns can remain hidden.
Backcountry addressed this challenge by establishing a structured feedback process that helped managers distinguish individual issues from wider patterns.
The result was clearer decision making, more focused improvements, stronger weekend productivity, and a workplace better equipped to respond to employee needs.
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