New Balance reviews

4.0

73% would recommend to a friend

(1,239 total reviews)

Joe Preston

86% approve of CEO

63% positive business outlook

New Balance has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,239 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The New Balance employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
3.0
Jan 20, 2024

Had higher expectations

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Compensation, benefits, pride of working at a well known brand, work like balance, new hires are way nicer. Your experience there (good or bad) depends on the team you’re on.

Cons

The company functions on politics, you have to know someone who knows someone to move up the ladder. Most people who have been there 5+ years think they are better than the rest, creating a toxic culture and they fail to be inclusive. Growth is really really slow, and HR doesn’t do anything about it or about the bad apples. They don’t value young talent and take advantage of them.

2.0
Dec 10, 2020

Don't Bother - High in Politics, Low in Honest Communication

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Many of the people who work there are nice, hardworking, and fun. Many of the pre-COVID company events were fun and the benefits are some of the most competitive of any U.S. company.

Cons

Communication between teams is severely lacking, causing confusion and resentment between groups. The communication that does make it to most associates is focused on what executives think is important and shows no understanding of the reality for the employees. Obviously executives perform different functions than other employees, but no effort is made to see the impact of their large-scale decisions. High level managers almost never visited my department or talked to people who worked there. Temporary associates and their managers were allowed to believe they had almost guaranteed full time slots on the team but were later told that this was not the case, after some individuals had been with the company over a year. In St. Louis, favoritism is rampant. I saw several people promoted to management positions, or have positions created just for them, with no interview process being followed. This resulted in people being placed in roles they were not qualified for. For my department this meant systems critical to our functions did not work for years and common sense initiatives could not move forward. The favoritism has led to a high degree of politicking. To get anything done it is necessary either to cozy up to someone and gain their favor over others, or spend weeks to months badgering them to offer help even on easy items. There have been many recent layoffs, including just before Christmas. Management and HR will not provide any information about the future of organizational changes, eroding trust.

4.0
Feb 20, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people; some of my best friends are here. Everyone works hard, is so smart, and has fun. Job security; rare they'll ever have layoffs as they treat every employee like a member of the family. Work life balance is great (depending on your manager of course). Great benefits package & health insurance incentives.

Cons

-Leadership can't make decisions. The ones they do are decisions by committee so tend to be the easy decision vs the right decision, or their are very short sighted and narrow minded. -Talk about taking risks to grow our brand, but NB is too conservative ($ and legal) to follow through on real breakthrough risks to get our brand seen. -Because NB never lays people off and budgets are tight, there are just too many people with not enough to do! -No growth path. You very quickly hit the end of your career growth at NB as soon as you hit Manager level. NB doesn't believe in titles making it difficult to recruit GOOD people, and difficult to leave because your title isn't on par with the rest of the world.

Viewing 25 - 27 of 1,239 Reviews

Glassdoor has 1,484 New Balance reviews submitted anonymously by New Balance employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if New Balance is right for you.