Wonderful culture, low pay, murky corporate policies, opaque decision-making process - Learning And Development Specialist Mud Bay Employee Review

4.0
16 Oct 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Outstanding, employee-first culture. Emphasis on empowering employees. Great place for people with "business owner" mindset.

Cons

Low pay compared to local market. Unclear or inaccessible corporate policies. Lack of documentation for policies and corporate decision-making. Sloppy ad hoc cooperate decision-making process. Disconnect between upper management and reality of working conditions for employees at grounded level.

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Mud Bay Response
6y
Thank you for your feedback. I share in your pride around Mud Bay’s people-first culture and our focus on empowerment and ownership thinking. We want all Muddies to feel empowered to share their experiences and feedback in all channels as well as in direct and candid conversations with other Muddies, Managers, and the Exec Team. Our culture and future will only be stronger for it. In 2019 alone, we’ve invested over $900K in pay increases for Muddies and we expect to invest even more in 2020. This investment is directly tied to feedback and input we hear from Muddies in all of our regions. An important thing to note around how we set pay is that we conduct market-based pay assessments for each of our positions on an annual basis. For positions at Home Office, we base our market data on Seattle (not Olympia). We currently establish our pay ranges by setting the mid-point of our range for each position at the 75th percentile of the data for comparable years of experience required. We encourage and welcome you (and any Muddy!) to connect with your manager, HR or me to discuss your feedback and any questions about how we set pay for your position. In addition to pay, we also frequently assess the relevancy and value of the other benefits a Muddy receives while working at Mud Bay. I’m incredibly proud of the additional investments we continue to make in our health and wellness benefits, ESOP, learning and development, and our staff discount. Our People Team listens daily to Muddies’ feedback on what is most valuable to them and I’m excited about the important work our team has ahead as we continue to make improvements. One of the things I love about Mud Bay is the emphasis we place on learning about and empowering good judgment. We feel it’s far more important when fostering a culture of ownership to focus on teaching our people how to think, versus telling our people exactly what they must do. We trust Muddies to do the right thing and we know it can be tough at times to lead and learn in what we call “the grey”. Our collective teams have worked hard and are continuing to update our documentation to provide more clear direction for those practices where it makes sense for us to be consistent. Over the coming months as we share more about Mud Bay’s strategic direction and bring greater focus to how we communicate, my hope is that you’ll experience more of the transparency you’re looking for. Thank you, again. Kindly, Michelle

Explore other reviews about Mud Bay

5.0
4 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great company. Very friendly and professional. Treat you like a family.

Cons

Your work night shift. So if that’s not your thing you won’t like it.

3.0
10 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The employee discount is great, best benefit of the job in my opinion. You get 40% off all products. My immediate team and manager were absolutely wonderful and the work atmosphere was great. You get to pet cute animals every day and help people solve their pet-related problems. When I started, there was great training and education, but that has recently gone downhill.

Cons

Even though my team was awesome, you can be sent to other locations when there are call-outs, and not every store has a good manager and co-workers. It felt a bit hostile when I went to work at other locations. Upper management is a total joke. They are controlling and make decisions that impact store employees without consulting those who actually work in retail.

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