‘Living the Hive’ at Burt’s Bees Annual Culture Day
By Gabrielle Laurent, Brand Experience Manager
This year marked the 15th Burt’s Bees Culture Day, an annual event to recommit to the values and convictions of the brand and share them with the broader community. More than 250 teammates gathered at the Angus Barn Pavilion in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a day of community service and team connection. We spoke with Burt’s Bees brand experience manager Gabrielle Laurent about this year’s programming, rooted in purpose.
What was the inspiration behind this year’s theme and activities?
This year’s theme, “Live the Hive,” was inspired by the collaborative nature of bees, the brand’s ultimate muse. The day focused on service, team connection, and our renewed brand purpose to unlock the beaty of nature’s magic. We worked with long-standing NGO partners Bee Downtown, an urban beekeeping nonprofit that oversees the Burt’s Bees observational hive, and Rise Against Hunger, a locally based nonprofit focused on global food insecurity. Bee Downtown offered lessons from the hive on collaborative work through a fun scavenger hunt. By working together, as bees do, we also made a meaningful impact on food insecurity with Rise Against Hunger. It was a special time to bring together the full BU team, including production, nonproduction and remote teammates. It felt like a busy hive, and we closed the day with line dancing, performing our own version of a waggle, which is the dance bees do to share directions to new floral sources with the other bees.
Each year Burt’s Bees partners with a nonprofit organization to incorporate a service-based activity for our teammates. What did that look like this year?
Given that bees contribute to the production of one-third of the food we consume, we once again collaborated with Rise Against Hunger to help those experiencing food insecurity in this community. Together the team packed 62,000 meals during Culture Day, underscoring the importance of fostering a purpose-driven culture that aligns with Burt’s Bees’ commitment to sustainability and community impact. By engaging every member of the team in meaningful service and collaboration, the event demonstrated how collective action can drive positive change, creating a ripple effect that extends to the broader Clorox family.
How does Culture Day align with Clorox’s broader enterprise sustainability ambitions and contribute to the company’s overall growth?
This year’s Culture Day reflected one of the many ways Clorox invests in people and communities to contribute to a more equitable world. It serves as a yearly reminder of our brand’s legacy of respecting nature so we can all live well. Moreover, it’s an opportunity to celebrate the resilience of our team and reinforce our founding principles of consumer obsession and resourcefulness. This echoes the guidance on our last Culture Day from our cofounder Roxanne, who emphasized the importance of learning from failure, being consumer obsessed, and having the grit and determination required to grow.
Clorox’s approach to sustainability, including how we support healthy communities, is integrated into our IGNITE strategy because we believe it better positions us to champion people to be well and thrive every single day. Learn more here.