In my recent posts, I have explored the idea that consumers will continue to look to get deeper levels of meaning from their brand choices. I have also proposed that companies might develop new ways to help consumers feel good about their brand choices, particularly in ways that benefit the planet and society as a whole. And I have pointed out that in order to meet these new consumer needs, publicly-owned companies may have to convince investors to take a long-term view.

But consumers and investors are not the only brand stakeholders that companies should consider. There is another stakeholder group that gets very little attention these days: employees. And yet employees have a massive effect on the success of any business.

Back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, enlightened entrepreneurs recognized the importance of a happy, healthy, and secure workforce. They didn’t just pay their employees; they invested in housing, medical care, and health facilities. William Hesketh Lever (later Lord Leverhulme), built Port Sunlight near Liverpool in the U.K. for the employees of Lever Brothers soap factory. Walter Kohler opened the The American Club (now a historic hotel) to house immigrant workers.  Kohler also established a benefit organization to provide employees with sickness and death benefits and created the village of Kohler, Wisconsin,  selling houses to employees at cost.

Lord Leverhulme, Kohler, and the others left legacies that included not just better products but better workplaces. However, I don’t believe that these entrepreneurs were simply acting out of altruism. Rather, I think they recognized that providing better working conditions, housing, and health care made a difference to their businesses. They made a long-term investment in the well-being of their workers, and that investment paid off.

I wonder if that linkage is apparent in today’s very different employment marketplace, in which management is distant from employees in terms of both geography and socioeconomic status. Though human resource departments try to close this gap using staff satisfaction surveys, they can’t fully bridge the distance.

Just as consumer expectations of brands have changed, so too have expectations of employers. Today it takes paid days for volunteer work, adoption aid and autism coverage to really help an employer stand out from the crowd. (Click here to see Fortune’s 2009 list of the 100 best companies to work for.) But maybe there is another way to motivate and retain employees, by satisfying their aspirations to be part of a larger endeavor, to do work they believe is worthwhile.

I am reminded of the janitor at NASA who, when asked to describe his job, replied that he was helping to put a man on the moon. I am sure he felt better about his job than many of his peers, and that the washrooms in his care were a lot cleaner than most. When a company adopts a worthy cause, one that gets people fired up and captures their imaginations, it can strengthen staff commitment and enthusiasm, factors that will eventually show up in the bottom line through an improvement in  customer experience and a reduction in costs. On the other hand, when a company gets hauled up in court for malpractice or is boycotted by consumers, the opposite happens.

In spite of myriad staff satisfaction surveys, the basic human need to feel part of something worthwhile seems to have been forgotten. Too many companies minimize their investment in staff rather than trying to maximize their return on it. Now that so many companies are building social and environmental programs into their business plans, more companies need to follow the example of IBM and make such programs central to their employee policies as well.

In my next post, I will consider the need to extend the stakeholder list to include humanity and the planet at large. Meanwhile, what thoughts does this post prompt? Please let me know.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Brands, Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page