Thank the People Who Move the Boxes, Not Only the Ones on the Slide
Look after the experience of people doing repetitive, high-pressure work in a business that celebrates its launches and sale results. Our employee engagement and experience services help you recognise warehouse crews, support agents and riders fairly, plan recovery after a peak, bring agency staff and delivery partners into the culture and ask for feedback you will act on.
The starting point
Does Your Frontline Feel Part of the Business?
After a peak, thanks often go to marketing, product and tech. The people who picked, packed, answered and delivered during the busiest weeks receive a generic message, if anything, and then start the next month tired.
We help you recognise the right people, plan recovery and listen in ways that lead to action.
You may be experiencing:
- Recognition going to the visible teams, while the floor hears only a general message after the sale.
- Peak weeks of long shifts with no planned recovery, so people return to normal workload already worn out.
- Riders, agents hired through a partner and agency staff doing visible work but outside the company's culture and communications.
- Surveys run once after a peak, then forgotten before the next one, with no sign that anything changed.
- Supervisors passing on targets without the plan, so a briefing becomes pressure and not direction.
- Support agents absorbing abusive calls through long shifts with no break and no one to escalate to.
- Transport, food, rest and facilities that were set for the usual headcount and not for the peak one.
What we can help with
Our Employee Engagement and Experience Services for E-commerce and D2C
Recognition Framework
Design recognition for floor teams, support agents, supervisors and office staff: what is recognised, how often, by whom and how it is shown, with temporary staff included.
Peak Experience Plan
Plan shifts, breaks, meals, transport and rest for the peak headcount, including night shifts, so conditions are set in advance and not improvised on the day.
Daily Briefing Method
Write a short briefing format for supervisors that states the plan, the priorities and the support available, and not only the target for the day.
Post-Peak Recovery
Set recovery arrangements after a sale, such as adjusted rosters, time off in rotation and a visible thank-you, before the next cycle begins.
Including Agency Staff and Riders
Decide what communication, recognition and access to a feedback channel agency staff and delivery partners receive, within the limits of how they are engaged.
Support Floor Wellbeing
Set break rules, a route for handling abusive customers, supervisor check-ins and a way to rotate agents off the hardest queues.
Short Surveys and Feedback Loops
Run brief pulse surveys and floor conversations at set points, and publish one action taken from each, so people see it was read.
Manager Check-Ins
Give supervisors and managers a brief, regular check-in routine with their teams, with a few prompts and a way to pass issues upward.
The deliverables
What You Receive
Depending on scope, your engagement can include:
- A recognition plan for each category of worker.
- A peak experience checklist covering shifts, breaks, transport and food.
- A supervisor briefing format.
- A post-peak recovery plan.
- A communication approach for agency staff and delivery partners.
- Support-floor wellbeing arrangements.
- A survey and feedback calendar with a published-action routine.
- A short measures set to track the experience across centres.
Step by step
How We Work
Hear From the Floor
We hold conversations with crews, agents and supervisors across shifts, and look at the surveys and feedback already collected.
Find What Matters Most
We identify the few conditions, such as transport, breaks and recognition, that people raise most often.
Design the Practical Fixes
We draft recognition, briefing, recovery and feedback arrangements that supervisors can run and that fit your budget.
Pilot at One Centre
We test the arrangements at one centre or team over a sale or a month and gather reactions.
Review and Widen
We compare the survey, absence and early-exit measures with those recorded at the start, then extend what helped.
The difference
Make Hard Work Visible and Recoverable
A planned engagement approach helps you:
We do not promise outcomes. We record a baseline before work starts, covering pulse survey responses, absence and early-exit patterns by shift, recognition given by team and issues raised and closed, and report against it, so you can see what changed and what did not.
- Recognise the people who did the work of the peak.
- Plan recovery, not just the surge.
- Include agency staff and delivery partners without confusing roles.
- Brief teams with a plan and not only a number.
- Support agents who handle difficult customers.
- Show that feedback leads to a change.
Find your fit
Who This Service Is For
Fulfilment Networks
Give crews recognition and conditions that scale with peak headcount.
Support-Led Businesses
Look after agents who carry the customer's frustration.
Businesses With Many Agency Staff
Bring supplier workers into the working culture.
Fast-Growing D2C Brands
Keep culture intact as the team grows past the founder's reach.
Quick-Commerce Operators
Design the experience for dark-store teams and riders working in city rhythms.
How it usually shows up in e-commerce and d2c
Warehouse crews, riders and support agents do repetitive, high-pressure work with little recognition. After a peak, thanks and visibility tend to go to the marketing, product and tech teams, while the people who moved the boxes receive a generic message. Peak work is exhausting and recovery time is rarely planned. Riders and agency staff, who do the most visible work, are outside the company's culture. Surveys are run at the end of a peak and forgotten by the next.
Common challenges
Where it goes wrong in e-commerce and d2c
Recognition goes to the visible teams
Marketing, product and tech are photographed and thanked, and the people who actually moved the boxes are not.
Peak work is exhausting and unrewarded
Long shifts and extra effort during a sale are expected, with little acknowledgement afterwards.
Riders and agency staff are outside the culture
They do the most visible work and feel the least part of the company.
Surveys are short-lived
The company asks how people feel at the end of a peak, and the answer is forgotten by the next.
A better process
What a working version looks like
- 01
Thank the right people
A named thank-you to the pickers, packers, agents and riders who carried the peak, from a senior person, in person. The engagement and culture work builds the routine.
- 02
Recover after the peak
Rest days or a modest bonus after a peak, announced before it starts.
- 03
Include the edges
Riders and agency staff invited to the thank-you, with the same message and a token of it.
- 04
Act on one thing
Pick the issue the floor raised most after the peak and fix it before the next, and say so.
What to check this week
- Look at the last thank-you message and note who it named and who it left out.
- Ask a packer what he got for working the last sale.
- Check whether riders or agency staff were part of any recognition.
- Find out what changed after the last post-peak survey.
- Ask a support agent when anyone senior last spoke to her about the work.
What this looks like in e-commerce and d2c
The parts of employee engagement and experience that are specific to this sector, rather than general.
Engagement Through a Peak
Keeping a tripled workforce functional for six weeks.
What this coversHide
Engagement Through a Peak
Keeping a tripled workforce functional for six weeks.
What this coversHideEngagement in e-commerce operations is concentrated into the period when it is hardest to deliver: a warehouse running at three times normal headcount, on extended shifts, with a majority who joined last month.
- Shift rosters published far enough ahead to plan around
- Break, meal and rest arrangements that scale with the headcount
- Transport at shift-change times, including nights
- Temporary staff included in recognition, not excluded by category
- Escalation route that works on the floor during peak
- Daily briefings that state the plan rather than only the target
- Post-peak thank-you and rehire invitation
Treating temporary staff as a separate class during peak is the most visible engagement failure and the most expensive, because they are the population you most need back next year.
Questions on this, in e-commerce and d2c
Recognition can include everyone working on your floor, with the form depending on how each person is engaged. We help you decide what you can do for agency staff and partners, and what belongs to their employer.
Adjusted rosters, rotating time off, a visible thanks to the teams that carried the load and a short review of what was hard. It is planned before the sale, so it actually happens.
Short pulse surveys at defined points, for example before and after a sale, and a fuller one once a year. What matters more than frequency is publishing one action taken after each.
Yes, and it matters more there. Early experience, supervisor behaviour and transport and rest arrangements show up in first-fortnight exits, which is a measure we can track.
We help you set break rules, an escalation route to a team lead, a way to rotate agents off the hardest queues and a brief check-in afterwards. Supervisors are shown how to use them.
No. Supervisors and operations leaders carry most of it on the shift. HR designs the routines, supports the managers and tracks the results, but recognition, briefings and recovery only happen when the people running the floor make them happen.
Recognition does not have to be expensive. A named thank-you, a visible board, a shift-level treat after a sale and fair access for temporary staff go further than a large award given to a few.
Through a few simple measures: pulse survey responses, absence and early exits by shift, and the number of issues raised and closed. We record these at the start, then compare them after each cycle.
Thank them by name, give real rest or a modest bonus announced beforehand and fix one thing they told you. People leave when they feel the extra effort was invisible.
Yes. They do the most visible part of the work, and leaving them out sends a clear message. A simple thank-you and a token costs little.
Recovery time, thanks, and a short look at what went wrong and what worked. It marks the end and sets up the next one.
They help if followed by one visible change. A survey that leads to nothing teaches people to ignore the next one.
Look After the People Behind Every Order
Tell us how your teams feel about peak and recovery, and we will help you design practical improvements.
Prefer to talk first? Call +91 80958 58589 or write to hello@gullyhr.com.
Book an Engagement Consultation
Tell us about your teams and their working conditions.
The general method — what employee engagement and experience covers, the questions it answers and what an engagement produces — is the same whatever the sector, and is set out on the employee engagement and culture page. What is above is the part that differs for e-commerce and d2c.
To run this in a system rather than on paper, see engagement and employee relations software.
Other HR topics for e-commerce and d2c
Selling a particular kind of product?
We have HR pages for 78 product categories, from footwear to software, and 436 subcategories within them.
Where to start
Most engagements begin with a review of how this runs in your business today, then a written process and the sequence to implement it.
See all HR topics for e-commerce and d2c, or another industry.