Your Brand= Your People

I’ve been at the Bersin Impact 2018 conference this week. In fact, I’m typing this from my hotel room in Hollywood, FL. I’ve been surrounded by amazing business leaders and HR professionals from around the globe talking about human capital trends. This isn’t the kind of stuff you might remember from your mother’s glory days in “personnel”. The lines of where HR starts and the business starts are continually blurred (as they should be). HR is not external to the business; people ARE business.

Deloitte has identified the overarching human capital trend for 2018 as “the rise of the social enterprise”. Gone are the days where CEOs of your favorite brands can remain silent on social issues that affect both their customers and employees. A major player and role model in this trend is Unilever. You may or may not recognize the company name, but you will certainly recognize their brands like: Magnum, Helmans, Dove, Lipton, Ben&Jerry’s, Nexxus, Ponds, and V05 just to name a few.

This morning’s key note speaker and Unilever’s CHRO extraordinaire was Leena Nair. Her message was very clear about a company’s responsibility to be a change agent for good in both the lives of their employees and their consumers. Here are some of the key take-away points from her presentation that relate to both people and brand:

• Create a culture where your employees feel like they can be their authentic selves at work and they will be your best brand ambassadors. You can see examples of this in Unilever’s sponsorship of Pride, diversity/inclusion in Dove commercial, etc.
• One of Leena’s first slides articulated: “Brands with purpose grow faster, companies with purpose last, and people with purpose thrive”.
• Leaders have responsibilities to further brand and purpose internally and externally.

• Millions of people apply to Unilever and even if they aren’t hired, the company has a duty to respect each as a human and consumer by giving them feedback/response to their application. Maintaining a positive experience with Unilever.

I immediately started following Leena and other Unilever leaders on social media. I can’t wait to learn more about what Unilever does next as a socially responsible enterprise. And because I love supporting good companies, I’ll keep buying my Nexxus shampoo and eating plenty of Ben&Jerry’s. Marketing at its finest!

*All photos were taken by me and are either from Leena Nair’s presentation at the conference or the Deloitte/Bersin sessions.