2nd post in a series on our journey to create ARAMARK Building Community, the company’s signature community initiative to strength the capacity of the country’s local community centers.

Armed with our research on our existing community activities and our decision to create a signature community initiative for ARAMARK, our team began to formulate the program development strategy.  

We started by defining the business goals that our community involvement initiative would need to address.  We summarized them as:

• Strengthen relationships with and actively engage ARAMARK employees. Due to ARAMARK’s structure, this was certainly easier to say than accomplish. With nearly 260,000 employees worldwide, the majority of whom work inside their clients’ locations and feel more closely aligned with their client name and purpose, it is not surprising many employees only felt loosely affiliated with ARAMARK. It was important for the signature program to help instill a sense of unified purpose and pride in our company. 
• Increase awareness and enhance reputation among opinion leaders in local communities. By design, ARAMARK’s services are often "invisible" to the outside world.  When enjoying the carefully maintained grounds of a national park, or ordering lunch at a company cafeteria, few people are aware that those serving them are part of ARAMARK.  Our hope was that the signature initiative could be used strategically to generate awareness of ARAMARK as a leading employer, a desirable business partner, and a contributing member of the community.

Our team discussed the elements of ARAMARK’s business and brand to reinforce. "We know that our employees are experts in their fields and come to work each day to provide core services to our clients.  We realized that one reason people are proud to be a part of ARAMARK is that, through their work, they are empowered to reach millions of people and enrich lives every day," Rick Martella, Vice President of Corporate Affairs, guided our team.  "We want our community programs to emphasize this for all employees." 

With a clearer sense of business purpose, we were guided by Cause Consulting in developing decision-making "guideposts" by which all possible issue and partner opportunities would be evaluated. For example, we knew that a clearly defined company-wide structure would be critical to the initiative’s success – but it would have to allow for some flexibility so that employees would be able to demonstrate their broad range of skills and ARAMARK’s capabilities at the local level.   For another guidepost, we decided that our signature program needed to not solely make use of grants and volunteers, but also of the company’s core competencies and assets.

Focusing on ARAMARK’s core business helped us to identify the types of social issues where ARAMARK could make the greatest difference: workforce readiness; health and wellness; and providing for basic human needs such as food, clothing, and safe and healthy environments. To make an impact on these issues, we decided the ideal community partner would be in need of ARAMARK’s strengths in these areas, while having complementary strengths of its own.  We sought nonprofit organizations that are expert in creating positive experiences and providing safe physical places where people of all ages can get support.

Bev Dribin is Vice President for Community Relations at ARAMARK