From Factory Floor to Showroom: How Bensons for Beds Runs Its Frontline on One Platform

The UK bed specialist is running frontline communication, tasks, learning and staffing on a single platform, from the factory floor to a 178-store estate.

When Bensons for Beds announced its partnership with WorkJam in April, the headline was scale: 1,800+ colleagues digitally connected across a 178-store estate, a manufacturing facility in Cambridgeshire, a national distribution network, and support centres in Accrington and Burnley. Three months on, Chief People and Culture Officer Carrie Westwell has told Furniture News how the platform fits the retailer’s wider workforce strategy, and why engagement sits at the centre of it.

Few retailers make what they sell. Bensons manufactures over 70% of its products in the UK, moves them through its own distribution network, and sells them in assisted-selling showrooms nationwide. That vertical integration is a commercial strength and an operational test: a machinist, a delivery driver and a showroom colleague need different information, different training and different tools, often on the same day.

Why does a vertically integrated retailer need one frontline platform?

Because the alternative is fragmentation. When stores, distribution and manufacturing each run on their own mix of noticeboards, group chats and paper processes, HQ loses visibility and colleagues lose time. WorkJam gives Bensons one place for communication, task management, learning and staffing across every part of the business, sitting between enterprise systems and frontline teams so that every signal becomes a targeted action.

Precision is what makes that scope workable. WorkJam’s Target Audience engine directs each communication, task and course to the right colleagues by role, location, shift or skill. A showroom launch brief reaches sales colleagues. A safety update reaches the factory floor. Nobody wades through content meant for someone else, and critical messages stop competing with noise.
In an assisted-selling business, visibility of performance matters as much as visibility of tasks. Using WorkJam’s AI-enabled features and Custom Widgets, Bensons surfaces real-time data from its existing systems directly inside the platform, so showroom colleagues see their individual sales performance and earnings alongside their schedules, learning and operational tasks, without data being duplicated into another system.

“Bensons is bridging the gap between support centres and frontline colleagues across its UK locations. Strategy moves faster, productivity increases, and feedback flows both ways, all while reducing the complexity of managing multiple systems,” said Steve Kramer, CEO and Co-founder of WorkJam. “We’re proud to be part of Bensons’ vision for its workforce, and this partnership shows the power of what WorkJam enables.”

How does WorkJam support Bensons’ listening culture?

Bensons has built structured listening into how it runs the business. Its functional and national Sleep Council gives colleagues a standing forum with senior leaders, and Forty Thinks, its ideation forum, crowdsources improvement ideas from across the company. Feedback is reviewed at senior level and tracked on “You said, we did” boards around the business.

WorkJam Surveys extend that culture to every colleague’s device, capturing feedback, sentiment and ideas in real time and routing results to the leaders responsible for acting on them. Listening at Bensons is a working process, not an annual event, and the approach shows: the retailer holds Great Place To Work Certified status and was highly commended in the People Team of the Year category at the British HR Awards.

“At Bensons for Beds, people sit at the heart of our transformation and future success,” said Westwell. “We’re investing in colleague capability and skill development to build on the expertise that already exists across the business. That means ensuring every colleague feels connected and clear on how they make a difference. WorkJam will give us a single platform that brings communication, learning, and performance together, and I’m excited about the journey ahead.”

What is engagement worth in an assisted-selling business?

For Westwell, the commercial logic is direct. “We recognise that great customer outcomes don’t happen by accident,” she told Furniture News. “They’re created by engaged, well-trained colleagues who feel valued and supported.”

“Higher engagement is consistently linked to stronger productivity, better retention, improved customer satisfaction and lower absence, all of which have a direct financial impact,” she added. “In retail, where margins are tight and competition is intense, investing in engagement isn’t a ‘nice to have’, it’s fundamental to sustainable performance. It’s even more important in an assisted-selling environment.”

Training carries much of that weight. WorkJam Learning delivers role-based courses and microlearning in the flow of work, so a new showroom colleague can master a mattress range and a factory operative can complete a safety refresher from the same app, without leaving the floor. Completions, scores and certifications are tracked automatically, giving managers a live view of frontline readiness.

Bensons started with the capabilities that matter most to its business today, on a platform built to add more as its needs grow. That is how WorkJam recommends every customer begin.

See how WorkJam helps retailers run stores, distribution and manufacturing on one platform. Request a demo or watch a manufacturing product tour now.