5.11 reviews

3.3

49% would recommend to a friend

(256 total reviews)
avatar

Troy Brown

39% approve of CEO

45% positive business outlook

5.11 has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 256 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The 5.11 employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

256 reviews
1.0
Mar 10, 2024

Terrible, and toxic

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Employee discount, free clothes when you start.

Cons

Upper management micro manages you until you can't vreathe, buy team is terrible, freight is terrible, HR will not handle any upper management issues as they are all playing favorites. They refuse to use positive reinforcement for anything. You make great money but 1 metric is off and you aren't a teachers pet, they will come for you like you never believe. Unrealistic expectations. They will blatantly tell you for performance reviews that you meet expectations at most that exceeding and exceptional are unattainable. People are miserable. It's beyond toxic.

3.0
Mar 4, 2024

Great company

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice working environment and ppl

Cons

Too much excessive and overwhelmed workload

2.0
Mar 2, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lots of cool products to explore and learn about. Great employee discounts. and really cool customers. Loved the casual work attire and fairly easy POS systems to learn. Loved doing events and even having opportunities to travel and help develop other stores. Even had the opportunity to do booth events.

Cons

No opportunities for growth. An ASM could work for 5 years doing the hardest jobs in the store (managing between poor store managers and employees who simply don’t care) and watch the district manager and higher ups choose someone random to now be your boss when you worked hard to move up. It was a struggle to make store goals with unattainable expectations for sales. Didn’t love that they tried to restructure the company to be more hush hush about the conceal and carry aspect of the products. Whenever an issue was brought to HR they very rarely helped in a way that held store managers accountable for poor scheduling/unrealistic expectations for employees/ harassment/ etc. the inventory was outrageous. Essentially employees could expect 20+ boxes weighing 2-60lbs of random products thrown half hazardly in a box. Then be expected to have it checked in within 24 hours and put into inventory and sorted then put out in the floor. Back rooms were hazard zones so packed full of boxes of products that customers weren’t needing. The women’s apparel barely sells because there are better women’s apparel for a fraction of the cost. The uniform apparel is much needed but the sizing and options were slim compared to men’s. One of the biggest issues was scheduling. 4 out of the 6 employees are key holders but only 3 full time positions available in the store. Most stores are only allowed 6 employees unless it’s a higher volume store but honestly it was rare to see more than 6 employees or have a fully staffed store. The hours offered to each store were unmanageable with only 6 employees. The pay before Covid was fair for retail however after Covid the higher ups wanted store managers to offer less with more work load. Pre Covid there was ship from store, but once it was rolled out employees were not given more compensation for more work. In fact this was a whole other ball game that had to be figured out. In 2020 the offered wage to just a part time associate was $3 over minimum wage. Now they only want to offer minimum wage. Which is not appealing when you realize McDonald’s pays more for less work with more flexible hours.

Viewing 76 - 78 of 256 Reviews

Glassdoor has 264 5.11 reviews submitted anonymously by 5.11 employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if 5.11 is right for you.