Brands from retailers to restaurants are all struggling with staffing issues in the last sprint of holiday shopping, and beyond.
Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, said:
“I would say ‘labor shortage’ is kind of a tricky term because is does imply that there aren’t workers available … what we know is that there are a significant number of workers on the sidelines who would be willing to come back to work if the conditions were right.”
As businesses experiment with ways to make those conditions right, from signing bonuses, to higher wages, to even streamlining the new hire process for seasonal workers to one hour from application to job offer, it’s a good reminder that brands are only as strong as the extended workforce that make up those brands.
Method co-founder Eric Ryan once observed: “the HR Director is the new Marketing Director.” Method referred to everyone who worked on the brand, from the marketing department to the soap factory floor, as “people against dirty.” The inside of the soap factory that consumers would never see was branded as thoughtfully as the packaging and advertising.
Internal branding is often treated as an afterthought but the best brands are ultimately marketed from the inside out.
Here are a bunch of the Christmas cartoons I’ve drawn over the years (including a few I drew during my years working at method):
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