Customer Story

Burton rides together on and off the mountain

The snowboard equipment and apparel company partners with Dayforce to streamline the employee experience.
  • Real-time global reporting

  • Improved employee development and retention

  • Reduction in payroll processing time

Since snowboarding became an Olympic sport in 1998, thousands of kids have watched elite athletes like Kelly Clark, Mark McMorris, Danny Davis and Zoi Sadowsky-Synnott dominate the sport of snowboarding. Some have even been inspired to become Olympic athletes themselves.

Where there’s snowboarding, there’s Burton. Founded in a Vermont barn in 1977 by Jake Burton Carpenter, a pioneer of the sport, the company was one of the first makers of snowboards and snowboarding equipment and apparel. To this day, Burton remains one of the sport’s most well-known, innovative, and top performing brands.

Headquartered in Burlington, Vermont, Burton provides snowboarders and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages and abilities with the equipment and apparel they need for both on and off the slopes. As a certified B Corp, Burton has a strong commitment to sustainability through research, development, and innovation, and it strives to provide a top-notch employee experience. It’s also committed to giving back: In 1995, Burton owners Jake and Donna Carpenter founded the non-profit Chill Foundation, with a mission to inspire young people to overcome challenges through board sports and to build a more equitable outdoor community.

“Burton is a purpose-led brand rooted in snowboarding and the outdoors,” says Justin Worthley, Senior Vice President of Global People and Culture. “Our goal is to positively impact the lives we touch by fighting for the future of our people, planet, and sport. That's why no matter who we are or what we do, we ride together.”

The global company has offices and retail locations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, China, and Austria. It employs approximately 1,000 people, more than half of whom are based in the U.S. and Canada. Its workforce includes full-time, part-time, seasonal, occasional, and temporary staff who work in customer service, marketing, web design, creative, people and culture, accounting, technology, product development and more. 

“Burton attracts people with brilliant ideas, with creative minds. And I think that’s something that makes the culture just incredible. I've been here for 12 years and pretty much every day I'm in awe of the talent, the culture, and the creativity that exists with the company,” says Worthley. 

Carving a path towards balance

Burton strives to be a product innovation pacesetter. As a global company operating in a complex and fast-changing world, it focuses on activities that simultaneously build trust, inspire loyalty, and drive high performance. But it’s not always easy.

Many employers today are trying to strike a balance between flexibility and compliance, empathy and efficiency, employee experience and productivity, and employee expectations and budget realities. “We’re always thinking of how to find that balance, not just from a company perspective, but also what's changed for our employees and what they're looking for,” says Worthley. “And if there's one thing that Burton is really good at, it’s being adaptable. And like a rider navigating the mountain, I think that shows up inside the company – when challenges and obstacles show up, we figure it out.”

Recruiting and retaining skilled and dedicated employees who can advance its brand and develop innovative products to maintain its competitive edge is as important as ever for Burton. But disparate systems made things time-consuming to manage and prevented Burton from providing a best-in-class employee experience.

Burton needed a unified system that could support the delivery of its company philosophy, prioritise employee well-being, extend its company culture and access to information to every employee, everywhere, and improve its ability to provide development and advancement opportunities to its workforce.

Dropping in to a single system

Prior to Dayforce, Burton had different platforms for recruiting, payroll, HR, benefits, and employee surveys. Systems also varied depending on the country. “We called it HR soup,” says Laurie Robinson, People and Culture Strategist. “Each one of those platforms had to communicate with us so we knew what was going on, and then we had to communicate that out to our employees. It was too much.” 

Burton wanted to shift to a one-stop shop solution that could streamline HR processes and support the employee life cycle. The company also wanted its chosen solution to be intuitive. "When we were evaluating our options to move ahead, creating a modern consumer-oriented user interface was really table stakes for us. It was not something we were willing to sacrifice,” says Worthley.

Burton decided to partner with Dayforce for payroll, benefits, time and attendance, recruiting, performance, compensation, learning, succession planning, engagement, analytics, and Dayforce Wallet. The company began implementation in late-2021 and went live starting in June 2022.

“Dayforce is a modern, intuitive technology platform,” says Worthley. “Dayforce is living up to the expectations of the world around us and is a consumer-grade platform that is user friendly and functional.”

Having one employee record has been a huge improvement over the multiple employee records Burton previously had in its “HR soup.” Payroll processing now takes less time, and it’s easier to find and correct errors when they occur. Managers are able to run global reports that help with workforce and compensation planning. And having the whole company in one system helps streamline company-wide activities.

“The people and culture team are starting to be able to shift our focus from administration and keeping up with everybody in all these separate places to really focusing on employees and their development and growth,” says Robinson.

Employees no longer have to manage five or six different applications to access information, all with different login credentials and user experiences. They can now log into Dayforce and access their pay stubs, schedules, and award letters with just a few clicks. They can also use Dayforce Wallet, a flexible pay solution that allows employees to access the pay they’ve earned in real-time, whenever they need it.

“The pressure is coming from our competitors, and the expectations from the workforce have shifted and really accelerated our need to have solid tools like Dayforce to meet the needs of our people and help them connect into Burton's present and future,” says Worthley.

A visible line into compensation

Burton places high priority on ensuring employees are compensated fairly and equitably as part of its strategy to remain competitive and retain top talent.

Dayforce Compensation is helping in this effort by improving data visibility to allow for better strategic planning. Managers can see their employees’ pay ranges and pay statistics, past pay actions and can use this information for budget planning. Employees have more transparency around their pay data to track how they're progressing through their career at the company. “Dayforce is really helping us be more transparent,” says Robinson.

Burton started by using Dayforce Compensation for its annual bonus and base pay cycles in North America, and in 2024 expanded this process to include its global regions.

“Dayforce has improved pay accuracy and enabled consistent administration of our pay practices,” says Worthley. “We used to spend about two months a year in a spreadsheet nightmare managing all the different variables that we had to sort through for annual compensation review. Dayforce Compensation has accounted for all those variables and made that much more efficient and accurate. The computation logic is powerful; we’ve yet to find comp plans that Dayforce can’t automate.”

When awards letters go out, employees often have questions about the math, and Dayforce shows all that in a simple display, again increasing transparency and building trust.

 “We're able to create a structure that leaders, managers, and employees feel good about because they can see it and they understand the variables that are driving outcomes, and it's all in one place,” says Robinson.

Traversing recruiting and development

Another of Burton’s top goals is powering smoother and more effective talent recruiting, development, and retention.

“From the time somebody looks at an ad for our jobs all the way through coming to the company, being onboarded, and then becoming part of our team and our culture, we want that experience to always feel authentic, and we want the person to feel like they belong with us,” says Robinson.

Burton’s name recognition attracts large pools of candidates to the positions it posts. But sifting through applicants to find the individuals who will bring the right mix of skills, experience, and culture to the organisation can be time-consuming, leading to a fragmented recruitment process.

Dayforce Recruiting helps Burton’s people and culture team quickly filter through many applicants and find people who really stand out and can contribute something unique to the company. The system also supports better onboarding for new candidates, no matter where they are, ensuring they feel connected to and valued by the company from day one. “We have a lot more work to do to enhance this process, and this is one of the next areas we will be digging into, with support from Dayforce,” says Worthley.

Dayforce Learning is helping Burton create a skills development environment that’s easily accessible and user friendly. Last year, Burton rolled out “Summer School,” which provided training on a variety of topics, including communication skills, managing difficult conversations, and setting goals. Dayforce made it super easy to package, rollout, deliver, and track completion of summer school, and is continuing to rollout Learning modules on an ongoing basis.

“We expect that using the tools in Dayforce Talent is going to help ensure we can connect employees with the information they need to be successful in their roles, and in the process drive home that we care about them, increase engagement and drive better results," says Robinson. “We are very focused on their progression through their professional development and on being able to react to their requests and suggestions.”

Burton and Dayforce – We Ride Together

“One of the foundations of the Burton Stance (Burton’s mission/vision/values statement) is ‘We Ride Together’, and we’re excited to be riding together with Dayforce, and to be collaborating in elevating the employee experience at Burton,” says Robinson.

“If I were to recommend Dayforce to somebody who's looking to implement an HRIS system, it would be an easy recommendation,” says Robinson, “because everything's in one place.”

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