Our People

At adidas, we believe that our people are the key to the company’s success. Their performance, well-being and knowledge have a significant impact on brand desire, consumer satisfaction and, ultimately, our financial performance. Fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion for our people is therefore key to successfully execute our new strategy ‘Own the Game’. In the area of people and culture, we focus our efforts on the following fundamentals: the attraction and retention of the right talents, role model leadership, diversity and inclusion, as well as the creation of a unique corporate culture. See Strategy adidas-group.com/s/employees

Measuring the success of our people initiatives

Until 2020, our HR function measured the success and the effectiveness of the company’s efforts with regard to its people initiatives through two people KPIs: employee experience as an internal measure and employer rankings as an external measure. With the launch of the new strategic five-year cycle in 2021, we will revise this approach.

Employee engagement

We are convinced that our employees’ feedback will play a crucial role in our pursuit of creating a desirable employee experience and continuing to attract and retain top talent. We can only tell if we are successful by asking our people, hence we empower them to share their feedback on a regular basis. In support of this thinking, we launched ‘People Pulse’ – our approach and system platform for measuring the level of employee satisfaction with the experience adidas provides as an employer – for all office employees with an email account.

People Pulse allows for the measurement of the employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). The calculation logic of the eNPS is identical to that of the brand NPS: Based on the main question ‘On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend adidas as a place to work?’, the total share of detractors (responses below 7) is deducted from the total share of promoters (responses scoring 9 and 10), producing the eNPS. This approach as well as a focus on collecting open-comment feedback from employees on a regular basis allowed the reduction of the questionnaire to a short pulse check of seven questions maximum, with the aforementioned eNPS question at the center.

In 2020, we saw the People Pulse continue to be leveraged as an important feedback channel from corporate employees to the company. We conducted a survey in September and saw an increase in employee NPS results – especially of favorable ratings – compared to the last survey conducted in 2019. At 63%, the participation rate remained at a stable level. Reports with detailed results and scores were provided to the Executive Board and leaders down to Board –4 level as long as they have at least 15 members on their team. Employees have access to the overall company results via our global intranet. Result recipients continued to review, cascade and openly discuss the results and drive action on identified areas of improvement.