Brown-Forman

With over seven and a half years at Brown-Forman, Hanna Buckner’s career spans various roles, most recently as Corporate and Employer Brand Manager. She excels in harmonizing corporate and employer branding, bridging the gap between the two spheres. Her background encompasses roles in HR and communications, focusing on people strategy, talent management, and global workforce planning. Notably, Buckner’s role extends beyond technical aspects, involving engagement with employees and the creation of meaningful onboarding experiences. Her diverse experience also includes roles in development, leadership consulting, and advertising, showcasing a well-rounded background in fostering organizational growth and effective communication strategies.

In an interview with Manage HR, Buckner discusses the marketing strategies employed at Brown-Formanand how theyhelp the firms grow and maintain its consumers, positively. She also speaks of her HR and communications role that contribute to Brown-Foster’sbrand-building prowess.

What are the challenges or disruptions you have encountered in the industry?

My role as the corporate and employer brand manager is new at Brown-Forman. I feel honored and excited that the company is hiring a specialist for this role. It is necessary to examine how the organization commits to reinforcing my team, which helps us grow beyond the US as they handle more than half of our sales. 

Recognition of the company founded in Louver Ville over hundred and fifty years ago was limited to people living there. Annually, we sponsor various community relations to make the employees feel worth doing the best work, for which people began to know Brown-Forman even better. Later, people started recognizing our products as a quality corporate citizen and a great workplace.

“Our global initiative is ensuring connection, whether in Singapore, Sydney, or San Francisco,we welcome clients and candidates by saying, ‘Come,sit at our table.’”

To overcome this challenge, we built a recognizable employer brand. Our consumer brands like Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve, Gin Marie, and Tequila Herradura are known to people but not the name Brown-Forman. We connected with Jack Daniels and built a balance by identifying the popular brand and what resonates among the consumers.

Being in the beverage alcohol industry, we want candidates to know and connect with our brands from an employee experience perspective that enhances our brand sales in over a hundred and seventy countries. 

Can you discuss some of the strategies deployed at Brown-Forman? How do you collaborate with other departments like HR and Marketing?

Our chief people, places, and communications officer, Kristen Hawley, is our executive leader reporting to the CEO. Her duties include HR, communications, and workplace strategies that help team leaders connect with her through consistent partnering and discussions. Her team is aligned with people’s side, enabling us to connect with our brands worldwide.

Even though my role fits in corporate communications, I shift into our global recruiting function in the HR department. Here, we have employees to manage different spaces. For instance, we have an employee to lead the Global recruiting and workforce training for the US and Canada, one to manage supply chain and technology, and one to do it for Europe and internationally with a team underneath them. Since it is formulated within the business, we can show how people strategy needs to follow the business strategy.

There exist different roles that build this relationship, which I learned during my orientation onboarding period. I spoke with our employees to understand their function at the firm, the reason for staying there, what the recruiting process looked like, and what attracted them to Brown-Forman. 

Since there are numerous roles at Brown-Forman, understanding what people do and why they run a supply chain analysis, operation management, or a bottling line operation is important.  

Teamwork is one of our values that builds positive relationships and helps me maintain the connections. I work a hybrid schedule facilitating my two-day visit to our corporate headquarters, allowing us to manage calls and meetings, which benefits the company.

Whether the company acknowledges it or not, our portfolio shows premium and super-premium brands; we want our consumers to reflect that. The project I started with focused on creating a premium candidate experience for our firm that continues to improve our global consistency. 

We reworked our website to focus on showcasing the documents that represent company aspects, achievements, and work culture by mentioning benefits the firm offers, like rewards or incentives or ESG works through employee testimonials and customer success stories to attract potential candidates. Employing this method simplifies the recruiting process and enables us to respect the candidate's time, whether they are actively into it or not. 

People know our product, Jack Daniels, but not Brown-Forman, which is why we leverage our brands to get along with the candidates through LinkedIn, E-mail, or recruiting tours, which lets them know more about the organization. 

What are some of the recent recruitment-related initiatives or projects at the company?

Since we value the time and efforts of the candidates, we focus on enhancing their experience at Brown-Forman. For instance, the application procedure, amount of information, and simplified terms that we practice allow them to apply for positions elsewhere. 

Last year, we filled 600 positions by implementing recruiter AI. Besides being efficient, it allows us to manage our buyers’ capability. We are cognizant of doing it with the required consistency. 

People at technology will never replace the key elements of recruitment. As the solution, we are going to leverage AI appropriately. Before, we were mutual and working closely with our HR and IT team to see the innovations they have to improve those. 

Again, we update ourselves to improve the key needed experience on things like how recruiters read resumes, connect higher profiles in the process, work closely, and use technology that we have from an analytics perspective.

What is one piece of advice that you would like to share with your peers and colleagues in the employer and corporate branding sector?

I suggest my peers and colleagues meet new people and share the organization’s story, brand forms, and work culture. Being brand-builders, we project ourselves with our brand Woodford to uncover stories of people who built it, which makes Brown-Forman known to the world. 

Our global initiative is ensuring connection, whether in Singapore, Sydney, or San Francisco,we welcome clients and candidates by saying, "Come,sit at our table."

We strongly believe in the values of diversity inclusions and what brings to our people, brand, and business. We aim to ensure that everyone feels welcomed, included, and heard.