Bristlecone is the industry’s largest pure-play supply chain service provider, helping global organizations modernize planning, sourcing, and fulfillment with tech-enabled solutions.
Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company supports customers across North America, Europe, and Asia across industries such as life sciences, retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, and high-tech.
With a globally distributed workforce supporting complex transformation programs, Bristlecone needed an employee listening approach that could create consistency, visibility, and follow-through over time.
Approach: Powering the infrastructure for MCARES-driven employee listening
At Bristlecone, employee listening is built around MCARES, the company’s internal framework for understanding what shapes employee engagement. The framework focuses on five pillars that influence how people grow and contribute at work:
- Career (goal setting, development, growth)
- Alignment (vision, values, camaraderie)
- Recognition (timely appreciation and learning from failure)
- Empowerment (autonomy, communication, accountability)
- Strive (work-life balance, wellness, sustainability).
Bristlecone’s goal was not simply to run an engagement survey once a year. Using the MCARES framework, the company focuses on maintaining an ongoing conversation with employees about their experience at work and the factors that influence engagement across teams.
To support this approach across 2,200+ employees, Bristlecone partnered with CultureMonkey to power a continuous listening program anchored in its MCARES framework and Care eNPS.
Solutions: Understanding employee perception of engagement efforts
With MCARES as its internal engagement framework, Bristlecone needed a platform flexible enough to support its custom survey model. CultureMonkey enabled the framework to run consistently while making engagement insights accessible to leaders and managers.
- Enabled continuity across survey cycles: Annual MCARES surveys and Care eNPS helped create a steady listening rhythm across the organization from 2022.
- Extended insights to managers: Feedback visibility reached managers as well, helping make employee listening more actionable at the team level.
- Bridging the perception gap: Identified how employees perceived engagement efforts and where improvements were needed to better align intent with actual experience.
- Connected employee data systems: Accurate employee data from Workday integration enabled Bristlecone to run engagement surveys efficiently.
Results: Stronger engagement and employee advocacy
With CultureMonkey supporting its listening program, Bristlecone entered a more mature phase of employee engagement. The 2025 results reflect deeper visibility into employee sentiment, backed by detailed reporting and actionable insights.
- Strong employee participation: Surveys delivered through email and MS Teams helped Bristlecone achieve an 87% participation rate.
- Steady engagement growth: Overall employee engagement score reached 4.2, reflecting steady improvement.
- Improved employee advocacy: The eNPS improved by 34.8%, reaching 59.76, reflecting stronger employee advocacy for Bristlecone.
- Driving accountability with action plans: More than 1,500 action plans were created, with 95% implemented, using a Kanban board to track progress and follow-through.
- Higher employee confidence: Employee perception of engagement efforts improved by 12.8%, indicating stronger employee confidence in the organization’s initiatives.
- Manager dashboard access: CultureMonkey’s manager dashboards gave 300+ managers visibility into team-level feedback and sentiment.
With CultureMonkey, Bristlecone built a strong engagement data foundation across its workforce. Enabling year-over-year visibility into engagement trends and supporting more confident people decisions.