Section of our business model Product and MarketingMarkets and Sales ChannelsPeople and CultureSourcing and Supply ChainBusiness Model Overview

To the business model

People and Culture

We believe that our people are the key to the company’s success. Their performance, well-being, and personal development have a significant impact on brand desire, consumer satisfaction, and, ultimately, our financial performance.

Our goal is to develop a culture that values our employees’ experience, unique differences, well-being, and performance. To support this aim, we rely on our six values – Courage, Ownership, Innovation, Team Play, Respect, and Integrity – across our people policies and processes, including how we hire, develop, promote, and evaluate performance. These values underpin our culture and are the essence of our identity. They underscore the behaviors and mindsets we value in our colleagues, represent the attitude we want to see in each other, and help us achieve top performance.

Our business model is fundamentally driven by human capital, encompassing skilled and creative individuals. As a result, fostering excellent working conditions and supporting freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are material for us. This includes ensuring secure employment, promoting a healthy work-life balance with flexible and fair working time, enhancing employee engagement and development, creating an inclusive workplace for all employees that is non-exclusionary and is non-discriminatory, fostering everyone’s talent, and providing competitive and adequate wages. These factors are crucial for attracting and retaining top talent, which in turn guarantees high product quality and the ability to meet consumer demands.

Our continued focus on people and culture is also reflected in our priorities around ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (‘DEI’), leadership, and performance. These pillars seek to focus our efforts on people and culture through:

• Creating a level playing field for everyone: DEI means valuing and leveraging the differences of our talents, consumers, and partners, while ensuring they are treated fairly and respectfully to enhance performance and unleash creativity. By creating a level playing field for everyone, we ensure that every individual has an equal opportunity to thrive and unleash high performance. By recruiting talent with diverse backgrounds and fostering a welcoming environment, we create a workplace where everyone commits and contributes at their full potential. SEE ESRS S1 DIVERSITY

• Attracting, developing, and retaining key talent: adidas is recognized as one of the best companies to work for, with our ‘employer of choice’ status continuing to receive global recognition in 2024, as we are ranked second best in our category in Forbes’ ‘World’s Best Employers’ list. We were also listed once again in Universum’s ‘World’s Most Attractive Employers’ rankings in 2024 for business students worldwide. In addition, we were ranked second in ‘Stern Germany’s Best Employers,’ which is three positions higher than in the previous year. According to Stern, we are ranked as the third most attractive company in Germany for female employees. Also in 2024, adidas was ranked first in TextilWirtschaft’s ’Working in Fashion’ study, which identifies Germany’s most popular employers in the fashion industry. Among other awards, adidas also won the ‘Employee Experience Breakthrough Artist Award’ for empowering its employee experience with AI-powered solutions. Finally, adidas received a perfect score of 100 from the ‘Human Rights Campaign’ for creating an equitable and inclusive workplace for our LGBTQIA team members. SEE ESRS S1 DIVERSITY
• Building role-model leaders who empower people: Our development offerings focus on growing leadership behaviors and the essential skills needed to ensure our continued success, across all different seniorities. In addition, our leaders receive inclusive leadership training through our ‘Leading with Inclusion’ program. Our ambition is to inspire and nurture talented and diverse leaders who exemplify our leadership behaviors in their day-to-day work. Through our new leadership framework, we aim to establish a language that can support our people in embedding these behaviors in all moments and hold each other accountable to the highest standards. We undertake different initiatives to elevate and enhance our leadership pipeline. SEE ESRS S1 TRAINING AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
• Creating a premier employee experience: Ensuring a positive and impactful employee experience is a key focus for us. We do this through listening to feedback from our employees, offering opportunities for flexibility, and focusing on well-being. To support a healthy lifestyle and mental well-being, our employees have access to a wide range of sports activities, events, and facilities. We have corporate gyms at many locations worldwide, 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 include hybrid sports classes, medical and psychosocial consultations (in-person and virtual), tools for digital disconnection, and carefully curated sessions on life topics. SEE ESRS S1 GENERAL ENGAGEMENT WITH OWN WORKFORCE SEE ESRS S1 WORKING TIME AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE
• Instilling a mindset of continuous learning: We continue to promote a high-performance culture by developing our employees and rewarding performance. We offer a wide range of learning and development opportunities, including online learning resources and interactive learning experiences that provide personal and professional growth opportunities for our workforce. Our investments in digital learning and development opportunities offer equitable access to learning content and just-in-time upskilling and/or reskilling. SEE ESRS S1 TRAINING AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
• Recognizing and rewarding both individual and team performance: The key focus of our rewards approach is to attract, retain, and motivate individuals through remuneration and benefits that are inclusive, fit for purpose, and competitive in the marketplace – thus enabling us to achieve our strategic objectives. To promote a high-performance culture, it is essential that we focus on performance management to ensure fair and equitable reward and recognition. SEE ESRS S1 ADEQUATE WAGES SEE ESRS S1 REMUNERATION METRICS

Our employees’ interests, views, and rights are of great importance to us. We engage with them through multiple channels and events to continually create a premier employee experience.