Serving Up Engagement: How Five Guys Strengthened Culture Through Behavioural Insight

Introduction

Five Guys had been running annual engagement surveys across Europe for years, with results that regularly outperformed industry benchmarks. But leaders wanted to go further. While annual surveys provided useful snapshots, they didn’t explain why employees felt the way they did, or how to turn those insights into sharper cultural and commercial outcomes. When they came to WorkBuzz, it was clear they weren't just looking for another vendor. They needed a partner who could help them move beyond surface-level metrics, uncover the human drivers of culture, and translate data into action at every level of the organisation.

The Challenge:

Beyond Benchmarking

With operations spanning the UK, Spain, France, and Germany, Five Guys had experience listening to employees across Europe, but they needed more flexibility, faster insights, and expert support to extract greater value from their surveys. The question was clear: How do we move from numbers on a dashboard to actions that change behaviour, culture, and ultimately business outcomes?

The Shift:

From Engagement to Behaviour 

Together, we evolved their listening strategy. Instead of focusing solely on traditional engagement measures, they began layering in cultural and behavioural insights.

It started with a pilot pulse survey in UK stores, designed to test new behavioural questions. The findings were so compelling that the approach was rapidly scaled into the annual survey across all European markets.

This marked a fundamental shift: engagement data was no longer a static report. It became a behavioural blueprint for action.

Inside the Approach: 

From Insights to Execution

• Deep dives with leaders: Executive and regional teams explored priority areas for action, the specific behaviours influencing engagement, and confidence in leadership.
• Shift managers at the centre: Recognising their critical role in driving store engagement and performance, shift managers became a core focus.
• Tracking perception shifts: Analysis looked at how managers’ experiences evolved over multiple survey cycles, providing evidence of what was working — and where extra support was needed.
• Layered support: From executive-level presentations to regional sessions, plus drop-in feedback and coaching for district managers and operational leaders, leaders at every level were enabled to act.
• Making data usable: Store managers initially received offline short packs with insights and recommended actions. Moving forward, these are being embedded into WorkBuzz’s AI-driven tools (PS AI and ACT) to streamline access and impact.
• Technology at scale: Tailored dashboards, PS summaries, and Perspectives storytelling features brought clarity to leaders across all markets.

“The debrief [..] was incredibly insightful and educational which made leaders think deeper around meaningful actions and the value of the survey responses. By far the best data analysis I have experienced from an engagement survey.” - Lila Warren, Head of Learning and Development & Internal Comms at Five Guys

Key Insight:

The Manager Blueprint

The behavioural data highlighted exactly which supervisor and shift manager behaviours most influenced engagement, wellbeing, and inclusion.
For Five Guys, this was transformative: they could now strengthen the manager population with precision, focusing learning and development on the behaviours most likely to boost engagement and cultural belonging.

Commercial Impact:

Linking Culture to Performance

The new approach connected listening directly to business outcomes:

• Employees identified as a flight risk were more than 2.5x more likely to leave, sharpening retention strategies.
• Engagement scores continued to benchmark well above the hospitality industry average.
• Attrition levels remained consistently below industry norms.
• Targeted pulses gave leaders evidence-based answers to emerging issues, such as improving collaboration between restaurants and the support office.
  
  

Outcome:

Making Data Human

The most powerful shift wasn’t in the numbers — it was in how they were experienced. WorkBuzz’s Perspectives feature transformed data into stories, making the employee voice more relatable and memorable for leaders.

Five Guys also used PS summaries to provide managers with simple, actionable overviews of team sentiment, how it was changing over time, and where to focus next.

Looking ahead, Perspectives will allow Five Guys to explore themes not only at the company level, but also by role, tenure, and ethnicity, adding another layer of richness to their cultural insights.

“I think that [Perspectives] is a very valuable addition and something that I’d be keen to use. It makes the message more relatable and it creates a better emotional connection to the feedback which in my opinion helps with driving accountability towards actions.

I really like the fact that it can be created per department and demographics. I’m thinking in our case and with the Pulse Survey to SMs, Perspectives would be very impactful way to communicate the insights.” - Lila Warren, Head of Learning and Development & Internal Comms at Five Guys

What's next:

Five Guys is embedding a lifecycle listening strategy that combines traditional engagement data with behavioural insight, AI-driven summaries, and Perspectives.

Future priorities include:

• Strengthening the critical role of shift managers
• Tailoring actions to demographic and regional nuances
• Embedding an emotional connection between leaders and the employee voice

With strong foundations already in place, Five Guys’ journey shows how moving beyond the basics of engagement creates measurable cultural and commercial results.

Ready to unlock the commercial value of employee listening?
Book a 30-minute call with one of our experts to explore your goals. No long demos, just a focused conversation about how listening can deliver culture and commercial performance.