We asked Brown-Forman Corp. how the producer of Jack Daniel‘s is coping with the challenges caused by the novel coronavirus. Here are answers to our questions from Kirsten Hawely, chief human resources and corporate communications officer, and Matt Blevins, Vice President, Jack Daniel’s Global Brand Director.
Kirsten Hawely, Chief Human Resources and Corporate Communications Officer:
Q: How is Brown-Forman maintaining all the things you have to do in business – production, sales, managing, etc.?
Brown-Forman continues to distill, bottle, and ship our products, given our designation as an essential business in the United States.
We have taken a number of extra precautions to ensure those who are working in our manufacturing facilities can remain safe and healthy. These include prioritizing safety and sanitation as the No. 1 responsibility of production supervisors and quality control teams, staggering shift start and break times (even if it means a loss of production time), increasing length and frequencies of breaks to allow time for increased sanitization, reconfiguring break rooms and common areas to support social distancing, placing cleaning wipes next to common work areas and touch screens, and reinforcing education about social distancing procedures in a production setting.
Those employees who don’t work in our manufacturing facilities have been working from home for the last several weeks; our offices remain closed in Louisville and across the world.
We have also re-purposed some of our production lines to produce the type of alcohol needed to make hand sanitizer
- But what about those who are sick?
If people call in sick, with any form of illness, they remain at home, seek medical attention as needed, focus on their health and recovery, and only return to work when symptom-free. If their sickness is a confirmed case of COVID-19, they remain at home, seek medical attention as needed, and only return to work when cleared by a healthcare professional.
Additionally, with COVID-19, our practice is to notify any colleagues with whom the person with a confirmed diagnosis has had close personal contact. We then require these colleagues to self-isolate for 14 days, and if no symptoms appear, can then return to work.
Lastly, if a person has COVID-19, local sick leave policies apply to ensure they have the paid time off that is needed to recover. In the US, we are providing 2 weeks of paid leave for those diagnosed with the illness.
- How is working at home working?
We have had a long-standing flexible work policy, but this is the first time that our entire salaried workforce is using it at the same time and all over the world.
Of our 4600 employees, roughly 3000 of them are working from home at this time (~65%). We are extremely proud of how our employees around the world have responded with agility, creativity, and compassion
We have had great success with our technology (for those working from home) and have utilized Webexes and Google Meets as a means to stay connected. That said, we know that our employees are trying to do their jobs alongside parenting, schooling, busy spouses/partners, and family members whose roles may require them to be on the front lines of this pandemic.
We know that work needs to be truly flexible and have asked that our employees simply do the best they can under these challenging circumstances and with many competing demands for their attention.
We also asked Matt Blevins, Vice President, Jack Daniel’s Global Brand Director, about how the brand adjusted its messaging as a result of the outbreak:
Q: Have you adjusted your messaging since the Covid-19 outbreak? If so, how?
Yes. We quickly reviewed our Jack Daniel’s messaging and ensured that we were sensitive to the situation consumers around the world find themselves in today. When doing that, we discovered this amazing insight that people are really staying social while practicing social distancing. This became the foundation for our message, “Love, Jack” that Jack Daniel’s recently shared.
Q: Did you have the message adjustments in-house or out?
We used a combination of our in-house teams and our agency partners (Energy BBDO). One aspect of this situation is that we are all reliant on each other. It really brought our teams together to be more connected and productive at the same time, a great and unexpected benefit.
Q: Do you expect to continue your message adjustments?
We will continue to adjust and be agile with our messaging and meet our consumers and friends of Jack where they are in this situation. We are happy with the response to “Love, Jack.” We are really proud of all the actions our Jack Daniel’s and Brown-Forman teams have taken, including our financial support of hospitality and restaurant workers and musicians, and the much-needed production of hand sanitizer by our distillery teams. We truly are all in this together.