With hate mail pouring in and thousands of bloggers calling for boycotts of Totes/Isotoner umbrellas, gloves and galoshes, the Cincinnati, OH–based company has had a stormy start to the rainy season.
In an Internet minute, the company learned the speed at which its largely female client base could mobilize. As one media outlet reported, “Hell hath no fury like 3,600 breast-feeding moms scorned.” That’s how many members of the Yahoo! group PumpMoms are calling for women everywhere to boycott Totes/Isotoner products. Zazzle.com has even designed “Boycott Totes/Isotoner” T-shirts.
The uproar stems from the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision on September 1 upholding Totes/Isotoner’s 2005 firing of employee LaNisa Allen for taking unscheduled breaks to pump breast milk for her 5-month-old son. The fact that the courts agreed with the company’s decision was inconsequential to thousands of bloggers who reacted to what appeared to be the company’s lack of support for nursing mothers.
“This is a textbook example of how a simple labor matter can slide into reputational chaos,” says Adam Hanft, founder and CEO of marketing and branding firm Hanft Unlimited.
In the face of growing public outrage, Totes/Isotoner chose not to respond. When CNN anchor Campbell Brown did a story on the court ruling, the company declined multiple requests for an interview. Imagine my surprise, then, when my open letter to Totes/Isotoner’s CEO Douglas Gernert was met by a call from the man himself. He decided to speak to Working Mother exclusively because he believes his company’s family friendly orientation is similar to that of the magazine.
We haven’t responded to a lot of the noise out there because we didn’t think it was appropriate to speak out about the case,” says Gernert. “But there’s a broader issue here.” Gernert believes his company’s family friendly culture was unfairly bashed because of one incident that didn’t represent its “strong commitment to working families.” He expressed frustration that “people took one situation and extrapolated about our company.”
Indeed, my interviews with Gernert, VP of HR Charles Aardema and numerous employees paint a picture of a company that has made many efforts over the years to support working mothers. When Totes/Isotoner CFO Donna Deye was raising her kids as a single mom, she realized she couldn’t continue to travel so much for work. “It was hard to help my kids with their homework over the phone,” she says. “So I talked to my boss and was given a three-year reprieve from travel.” This is certainly an accommodation that many companies wouldn’t make.
JoAnn Kelly, who has worked in the Totes/Isotoner warehouse, says she’s always been able to arrange with her supervisor to pump milk when she was nursing, or to change her shift so she could wave to her four children when they got on the bus their first day of school. “It broke my heart to hear all these horrible things about the place I’ve worked for 10 years,” she says. And Kasey Williams, an assistant buyer, was able to breastfeed her son for nine months when she returned to work after her maternity leave. “I talked to my manager and said, ‘I need to pump,’ so we worked that into my schedule.” LaNisa Allen’s situation was a bit more complicated since she was an hourly employee.
Indeed, there’s a difference between the benefits enjoyed by corporate employees and employees who work in the warehouse. The office staff is provided a flexible work schedule, the ability to telecommute and a private Mother’s Room in the headquarters office. The hourly employees who work in the warehouse must follow specific rules that govern breaks and timekeeping. “Employees are let go from time to time for taking additional paid breaks without permission,” says Aardema. “As in LaNisa Allen’s case, any employee requiring specific times of day for a designated break must schedule that time with a manager.”
That’s the bottom line in this case: Allen, an hourly worker who was with the company only 20 days when she was fired, didn’t check with a manager before taking additional breaks to pump.
The incident has “amplified sensitivity” to employees’ needs, says Gernert. “We recognize that if an employee’s needs fall outside of established policy, we have to remain open about accommodating them.” Aardema says the company now counsels any nursing mother—including hourly workers—that in the event she finds her work schedule interfering with her ability to pump, she should “reach out to her supervisor, who will find a way to accommodate her.” The company has also instructed supervisors and managers to regularly check in with their associates to find out if previous arrangements continue to meet their needs. “This approach is working well,” reports Aardema.
The company is also adding a Mother’s Room in the warehouse, to be complete in October. “We felt we should have the same environment available in the warehouse that we’ve created in our office,” says Aardema.
So why did Totes/Isotoner—with a largely female client base and a 70 percent female workforce—choose to remain silent in the face of this public outcry? Branding experts say the company underestimated the power that the Internet has given ordinary consumers, who now have an enormous platform to publicly air their grievances. “The power of social media is that it’s very easy to organize,” says Patrick Vogt, chairman and CEO of digital marketing technology company Datran Media. “People can reach a broad base of supporters via Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other platforms—and can seriously hurt the Isotoner brand, possibly causing brand erosion.”
Vogt, along with other branding experts, believes that not responding to public criticism isn’t an option. “Consumers have a level of expectation that brands owe them an explanation for issues that crop up in the news,” he says. “Brands should begin to look at this not as a curse, but as a privilege.” Choosing not to comment was “a very big mistake,” echoes Karl Foxley, search engine optimization consultant and owner of Foxley Marketing Solutions. “There seems to be an assumption that ‘no comment’ equates to an admission of guilt.”
Branding expert Hanft believes there was a lot Totes/Isotoner could have done to prevent a PR disaster from emerging, and to manage it once it happened. His strategies include:
- Recognize there's no difference between your legal, HR and marketing departments. Companies need to be educated about how to conduct business in the new world of transparency and take-no-prisoners consumers who are connected and ready for business.
- Don't be afraid to change course. As this case was winding its way to Ohio’s highest court, cooler heads in the company should have realized they would achieve at best a Pyrrhic victory: a judicial win, but a consumer defeat.
- Seize the initiative. Isotoner should have announced that it was putting together a team to evaluate the company’s practices regarding lactating women. The company should have acknowledged that it alienated a lot of customers and hoped to win them back. It also should have used social media like Twitter and Facebook to build new bridges with women.
For my part, interviews with Totes/Isotoner employees, managers and leaders have convinced me that the company is doing a lot right when it comes to its working mother employees—and wants to do even better. Unfortunately, in the case of LaNisa Allen, the company that sells umbrellas forgot that we women stand together under one very big one.
We haven’t responded to a lot