Creating a Premier Employee Experience Information

Ensuring a positive and impactful employee experience is a key focus of our people strategy. We do this through listening to feedback from our employees, offering opportunities for flexibility, and focusing on well-being.

• Employee listening: Building on our established employee listening activities, we launched another annual ‘Employee Listening Survey’ (‘ELS’) in March 2023, with a record participation of 73% across all employees in corporate offices, retail stores, and distribution centers. In addition to feedback analysis being undertaken within the respective teams, we identified employees globally to help leadership create and drive action plans.
• Health management: We strongly believe that physical, mental, and social well-being are of equal importance and are the cornerstone of sustainable performance. With this holistic approach, we aim to provide the best possible conditions for our employees to ensure their well-being, safety, and health. Focusing on prevention, education, and support, our comprehensive and inclusive portfolio caters for the diverse needs of our employees. Our employees have access to a wide range of sports activities, events, and facilities. We have corporate gyms at many locations around the world, including Herzogenaurach, Portland, Gurgaon, Shanghai, Dubai, and Manchester. Many of our office buildings have lockers and showers, allowing employees to include sports in their working day or cycle to work. To meet employee needs in a hybrid work set-up, programs are both local and virtual to support teamwork and a healthy lifestyle. Offerings range from hybrid sports classes to medical and psychosocial consultations (in-person and virtual), screening and vaccination programs, tools for digital disconnection to carefully curated sessions on life topics. Today, with a gradual extension, almost all adidas employees around the world have access to an employee assistance program. On the occasion of World Mental Health Day, many initiatives were launched across markets to proactively nurture, protect, and promote mental well-being. In addition, 2023 saw the implementation and extension of selected programs offered across Germany aimed at elevating our approach to health. These include a tailored three-year plan for our dual students and apprentices to support a healthy start to their working life, ergonomic programs for our employees, and healthy leadership training for our people managers in our stores and distribution centers.
• Health and safety: Managing the health and safety of our global workforce remains a priority for us. Our infrastructure, assets, and operations comply with ISO 45001 (Occupational health and safety management system), and we regularly conduct internal and external audits to ensure a healthy, safe, and secure work environment for all employees. We monitor our performance closely to measure our progress toward our targets and to identify areas for improvement. Our training and guidelines on health and safety have been successfully implemented and scaled throughout the organization. In 2023, we recorded a ‘Lost Time Incident Rate’ (‘LTIR’) of 0.33 (2022: 0.44) as well as, unchanged to the previous year, a zero ‘Occupational Illness Frequency Rate’ (‘OIFR’) and zero fatalities for own employees.¹
  
  For external, contracted workforce at our offices and distribution centers, we ended the year 2023 with an improved LTIR of 0.49 (2022: 0.67). In 2023 we recorded one work-related fatal accident at an own retail construction site compared to one such accident at a distribution center in 2022. We initiated thorough investigations to understand the exact root cause enabling us to take all measures and actions necessary to prevent similar accidents in the future.
• Work-life integration: We aim to harmonize the commercial interests of the company with the professional, private, and family needs of our employees. Our work-life integration initiatives and programs include the provision of flexible working times and locations, personal development, and leadership competence related to work-life integration, as well as family-oriented services:
  • Family and childcare: In addition to providing flexible working opportunities and sabbaticals, we maintain a family-friendly environment and infrastructure. At our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, we provide a bilingual childcare facility, ‘World of Kids,’ with 270 places. Well-equipped parent-child offices on campus provide for safe spaces to bring kids to the workplace. We also run children’s camps to support working parents during school holidays. In Herzogenaurach alone, 450 children attended these camps in 2023, and 115 in Portland. Our Latin America market held a special day where children had the opportunity to accompany their parents to work to learn what they do and enjoy a fun program.
  • Parental leave: For parental leave and re-entry, programs are in place to provide employees with advice early on and options for their return to work, also taking into consideration flexible working hours and work locations. In Germany, employees on parental leave are guaranteed their original positions, which are only filled temporarily. In the US, in addition to regular parental leave for new parents (up to ten weeks at home, 70% of their salary), adidas offers an extra two weeks of paid parental leave. Furthermore, our special parental bonding leave provides parents with the opportunity to stay home for up to six months within the first twelve months after the child’s birth or placement. While unpaid, it offers parents the opportunity to stay home longer and take care of their new arrival and new life together. Latin America provides for an extended parental leave approach across the market, with mothers having 24 paid weeks in total to spend with their children, while fathers/partners have 20 paid days in total. In addition, mothers can work fewer hours for one month immediately before and after their maternity leave period. adidas offers paid secondary parental leave subject to local market legal requirements.
  • Flexible work: Our global flexible work approach comprises two concepts. With ‘Off-Campus-Working,’ employees can work up to 40% of their working hours from home. In addition, our ‘Working from Elsewhere’ concept’ enables short-term remote working from another location (domestic or international) for up to ten days per year. Having experienced the importance of social and personal interaction first-hand during the pandemic, we want to maintain flexibility to support employees’ unique needs and experiences while enabling personal collaboration at the workplace.
• Commitment to impact: Together with our employees and partners, we act on our purpose that through sport, we have the power to change lives by fostering genuine connections with the communities we serve and affect. To maximize this positive impact, we create volunteering programs and company-matched fundraisers that encourage our people to actively engage and bring our core belief to life.
  
  In 2023, adidas launched a new global employee giving platform allowing employees across all markets to participate in impactful volunteering activities and to contribute to global fundraising opportunities. Examples for volunteering opportunities – co-created with our partners and based on the respective communities’ needs – range from refurbishing sport fields, to serving as a running buddy for blind runners, to coaching children with special needs and many more. Collectively, adidas employees performed 2,547 hours of voluntary work², engaged in 83 different projects, and/or supported 62 non-profit organizations or social ventures. On top of that, adidas employees donated € 81,749 in 2023. Employee donations were matched by adidas with € 45,112. We demonstrated our support as one adidas team, especially when disaster struck, for example in a fundraiser for those affected by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
• Employee relations: We invested in our new, global employee relations function, which offers a dedicated, independent, and impartial resource and point of contact to resolve workplace conflicts. The team plays a pivotal role in enhancing our workplace culture, ensuring that interactions reflect our adidas values of integrity and respect.

1 Own employees at offices and distribution centers. Excluding employees at own retail stores.

2 Excludes ‘ERG’ and individual hours of voluntary work.