Our People
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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. Through the delivery of our People Strategy, we focus our efforts on four 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.
PEOPLE STRATEGY ENABLES A CULTURE FOR DELIVERING ‘CREATING THE NEW’
As an integral part of ‘Creating the New’, the People Strategy is a testament to thinking that our 2020 strategy can only be executed if we speak to our people on all levels and win both their hearts and minds.
The People Strategy consists of four pillars that serve as a basis for creating our culture and environment for our people in order to successfully support the company strategy. see Diagram 01 These four pillars also serve as a tool for prioritisation, sense-checking and measuring our HR actions and initiatives.
The People Strategy is implemented through a portfolio of projects which will directly deliver into each of the four pillars. In 2016, we made good progress by successfully delivering the following initiatives:
Meaningful reasons to join and stay:
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Enabled by a new global mobility policy, our Talent Carousel career development programme entered its second year.Employees from all over the world were once again asked to apply for this programme that would see its 20 finalists take a cross-functional and international career step by starting a new role in a new location in 2017. Successful candidates remain in the programme for 24 months with the right to return to their home location while being prepared for a future senior management position.
01 THE FOUR PILLARS OF OUR PEOPLE STRATEGY
People Strategy
Defines and inspires the right organisational culture for ‘Creating the New’
Attraction & retention
of the right talents Role model leadership Diversity & inclusion Culture
Meaningful reasons to join and stay
Attract and retain great talent by offering personal experiences, choices and individual careers.
Role models who inspire us
Nurture and inspire role model leadership.
Bring forward fresh and diverse perspectives
Represent and live the diversity of our consumers in our people.
A creative climate to make a difference
It is our goal to develop a culture that cherishes collaboration, creativity and confidence – three behaviours we deem crucial to the successful delivery of our corporate strategy.
Choice & Agility & Speed
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In September 2016, we introduced a new employee Stock Purchasing Programme for Germany, the US, the Netherlands and Hong Kong. A total of 16.3% of around 16,000 eligible employees decided to participate in the first enrolment period. It is planned to extend this programme to further countries in the coming months.—
A newly introduced central onboarding process at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach/Germany now ensures new starters enjoy a high-quality, consistent experience upon joining the company.The new process is the result of a cross-functional continuous improvement initiative and provided important learnings for the global onboarding initiative which is aimed at introducing standard onboarding tools across the company starting in 2017.
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Since 2016, employees at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach have been able to take advantage of our Employee Assistance Service. By calling an external hotline, employees can get support with finding and organising child care, elder care and household services.Role models who inspire us:
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In 2016, we offered our first-time people managers across EMEA, Asia and the US our Fit2Lead training. This training is specially designed for all first-time people managers who lead up to five people. It provides them with basic knowledge on how to become a good people manager, manage their business and continue to develop themselves throughout their career. The course can also be booked by managers who would like to refresh their people management skills. This curriculum is complemented by the Fit2Lead Experienced Manager training, a new offer we introduced in 2016. The Experienced Manager training is geared towards managers who bring more than five years of management experience and/or lead or influence larger teams.It is an experiential learning programme with a focus on how to lead those around you to perform better – as a team and as an individual.
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First leadership and executive groups started to take a newly designed gender intelligence training aimed at challenging gender stereotypes as well as providing leaders with data, insights and tools for practising inclusive leadership to build a more balanced organisation.Bring forward fresh and diverse perspectives:
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We successfully hired the first dedicated Diversity Director in the company’s history. Reporting into the Head of HR Strategy, the Diversity Director is in charge of formulating the global diversity strategy and driving its implementation together with leaders and HR Partners.—
For the second consecutive year, adidas North America achieved a perfect 100 point score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index.—
We introduced a global data simulation tool that allows HR managers to calculate and set more realistic gender and age targets for their functional areas by taking criteria such as business growth, attrition, promotions and hirings into consideration.—
Functional and local market teams continued to develop dedicated plans to invest in a stronger female talent pipeline, data analysis on gender balance and action plans to establish a more balanced organisation in terms of gender, age and race.A creative climate to make a difference:
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In 2016, we cascaded and hard-wired our three company behav-iours – creativity, collaboration and confidence – into our global Performance Management system and approach, The Score.Creativity, collaboration and confidence – the ‘3Cs’ – are behav-iours we as a company deem to be crucial for employees to display on a daily basis in order to execute our Creating the New strategy and become an even more consumer-focused organi-sation. As we enter 2017, we will focus on continuing to detail out the exact definition of the 3Cs and use them as the foundation of our company leadership framework.
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In a continued effort to provide our employees with the best work environment possible, further construction work has started on our headquarters campus in Herzogenaurach. A new landmark building called ‘Arena’ will become the company’s new main office at the end of 2018, offering over 2,000 employees a new home and centralising most of the employees in Herzogenaurach on the World of Sports campus. A new restaurant and multi-purpose conference centre called ‘HalfTime’ will be set up. 2016 also saw the construction of a second future workplace space:‘Pitch 2’. Employees based in Pitch 1 and Pitch 2 work according to the activity-based working concept: employees no longer have assigned desks but can choose from a multitude of different types of rooms and spaces (e.g. project room, focus box) based on the tasks they have on hand. Change management in these new buildings is supported through a dedicated mobile app as well as employee-led feedback groups and regular feedback surveys.
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At our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, we also opened the MakerLab. It serves as a dedicated space providing tools such as laser cutters and 3D printers and know-how to help employees realise their ideas and create prototypes. The MakerLab idea has its roots in the ‘hacker space’ concept, where all employees are given free rein to create and bring their ideas to life.—
In Moscow, we opened a brand-new office building called ‘The Home of Sport’. It includes store facilities, a state-of-the-art gym as well as modern offices and open-plan spaces.HR FOUNDATIONS FOR OUR PEOPLE STRATEGY
In 2016, the adidas HR function launched the People OneView employee profile. People OneView is a self-service online portal that allows employees, leaders and HR Partners to both access and manage the most important personal and work data such as salary, career and team information as well as HR applications. By providing direct access to People OneView, users are now more empowered as they can manage their most important personal data without having to go via their HR Partner. HR Partners in turn gain back valuable time to counsel and support employees.
With the introduction of the HR Shared Service Centre for Germany, all employee queries relating to compensation, benefits, time management and HR systems are now centrally channelled and managed through this newly founded department. HR Partners are thus enabled to focus fully on supporting line managers and employees on topics such as career counselling, people management and coaching.
MEASURING THE SUCCESS OF OUR HR INITIATIVES:
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND EMPLOYER RANKINGS Our HR function measures the success and the effectiveness of the company’s efforts with regard to its people initiatives through a set of chosen KPIs. We will use two leading people KPIs: employee experience (eNPS) as an internal measure and employer rankings as an external measure.
Employee engagement: adidas carries out employee engagement surveys in order to measure the engagement and motivation of our employees. The results of these surveys are a non-financial KPI for our company. see Internal Management System, p. 86 Following a successful pilot within HR in 2016, a new approach towards measuring the employee experience in the company will be launched during the first half of 2017.
Employer rankings: Our ‘employer of choice’ status continues to garner worldwide recognition and enables us to attract, retain and engage industry-leading talent to sustain the company’s success and growth. In 2016, adidas locations around the world leveraged our employer brand attributes for attraction, retention and engagement strategies. This work contributed to several Top Ten rankings worldwide and has also enabled us to recruit some of the industry’s top talent. see Diagram 02
02 AWARDS
The World’s Most Attractive
Employers/Universum Corporate Health Award ’Special Award for healthy nutrition’/EuPD Research Sustainable Management, Handelsblatt, TÜV SÜD Akademie and ias-Gruppe
Best Employer 2017/glassdoor
Germany trendence Graduate Barometer –
Business Edition/trendence
GROUP MANAGEMENT REPORT – OUR COMPANY
To further drive high performance within the company, we use a performance management approach called ‘The Score’. It brings target setting, employee development and performance appraisal under one common process. The Score also brings focus, simplicity and alignment to the setting of team goals and individual targets.
Each employee is evaluated and receives feedback at least twice a year.
Our remuneration system is based on this performance management approach. As part of this system, we are committed to rewarding our employees with compensation and benefit programmes that are competitive in the marketplace. Remuneration throughout the company comprises fixed and variable monetary compensation, non-monetary rewards as well as other intangible benefits. The cornerstone of our rewards programme is our Global Salary Management System, which is used as a basis for establishing and evaluating the value of employees’ positions and salaries in a market-driven and performance-oriented way. The various variable compensation components we offer our employees include:
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Bonus programme – short-term incentive programme—
Profit participation programme – ‘Champions Bonus’—
Long-Term Incentive Plan (LTIP) for leaders and Executive Board members—
401-K Retirement Plan (USA) and the adidas Pension Plan (Germany)—
adidas Stock Purchase Plan.Our subsidiaries also grant a variety of benefits to employees, depending upon locally defined practices and country-specific regulations and norms.
OUR TALENT AND SUCCESSION MANAGEMENT
Trainee programme: The Functional Trainee Programme (FTP) is an 18-month programme providing graduates with an international background and excellent educational credentials the opportunity to start a functional career within adidas. The programme comprises six three-month assignments in various departments. At least one of these assignments takes place abroad. At year-end 2016, we employed 49 participants in our global FTP (2015: 27).
Apprenticeships and internships: Our development programmes are complemented by apprenticeship and internship programmes.
The adidas apprenticeship offers young people who want to join our company directly out of school the opportunity to gain business experience in a two- to three-year rotation programme. The programme includes vocational training in retail, shoe technology and IT, as well as integrated study programmes in fields such as digital commerce, finance or international business. At the end of 2016, we employed 63 apprentices in Germany (2015: 63) and 35 integrated study programme students (2015: 40). Our global internship programme offers students three to six months of work experience within adidas. In 2016, we employed 623 interns in Germany (2015: 553).
Succession management: Our succession management approach aims to ensure stability and certainty in business continuity. We achieve this through a globally consistent succession plan which covers successors for director-level positions and above. We conduct regular reviews to ensure individual development plans are in place to prepare successors for their potential next steps.
ONLINE PLATFORMS TO DRIVE EMPLOYEE COLLABORATION AND LEARNING
We believe that a robust and state-of-the-art internal communication platform is essential for driving employee engagement and fostering learning as well as open collaboration within our organisation. We use an enterprise collaboration platform called ‘a-LIVE’, which encourages employees to share knowledge, collaborate and discuss current topics. In addition, we have established an ‘Ask the Management’ platform on our intranet, enabling employees to openly address questions to our senior leaders. Via a-LIVE we also offer all employees access to the ‘Learning Campus’, a state-of-the-art learning platform that provides opportunities for both e-learning and knowledge sharing. Employees are able to access content 24/7 in a virtual environment.
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DEDICATED PROGRAMME TO SUPPORT WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION
We aim to harmonise the commercial interests of the company with the professional, private and family needs of our employees. Our Work-Life Integration Programme includes flexible work time and place, people development and leadership competence related to work-life integration, as well as family-oriented services. In addition to providing flexible working arrangements, teleworking, sabbaticals and parent/child offices, we have child-care facilities at our company premises in Canton, USA, and a day-care centre at our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany.
In 2016, the employer rating service glassdoor rated adidas as the best employer in Germany with regard to work-life balance offerings.
EMBRACING DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
We believe it is crucial for the success of our company to have a very diverse workforce and individuals with different ideas, strengths, interests and cultural backgrounds. We see a great benefit in the diversity of our employees as this helps us to better fulfil the wishes and multi-faceted demands of our consumers around the world. All our employees are appreciated – regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, world view, disability, age, sexual orientation or identity.
At our global headquarters in Herzogenaurach, we have employees from more than 80 nations. As part of our global diversity approach we proactively pursue a portfolio of internal and external activities as well as memberships:
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Our active membership in ‘Charta der Vielfalt’ (‘Diversity Charter’), Prout at Work, the Diversity and Inclusion in Asia Network (DIAN) and the non-profit organisation Catalyst allows us to promote communication and the sharing of best practices and insights.—
We have regular events highlighting diversity as a key topic, such as our global Diversity Day.—
We provide quarterly diversity reports to management to support decision making and target setting.—
We provide diversity training to our employees and gender intel-ligence training to our leaders.—
Within the company, for example, we support the 500-member strong Women’s Networking group in Herzogenaurach.Additionally, we continue our support of the international LGBT community, which is also driven by our employees at our major locations. The key objectives and contributions to adidas of the latter are providing awareness and education, acting as an infor-mational resource to interlinking departments and engaging with the outside LGBT communities to combat prejudice and discrimination.
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We have been participating in diversity career fairs in Germany, such as the Sticks & Stones in Berlin.—
adidas is listed in the genderdax see Glossary, p. 217.—
We regularly take part in benchmark studies in order to review our activities in the fields of diversity and inclusion.03 EMPLOYEE STATISTICS 1
2016 2015
Total number of employees 2 60,617 55,555
Total employees (in %)
Male 50% 50%
Female 50% 50%
Management positions (in %)
Male 70% 71%
Female 30% 29%
Management positions (in %) within adidas AG 3
Male 73% 76%
Female 27% 24%
Average age of employees (in years) 30 30
Average length of service (in years) 5 4
1 At year-end. Figures reflect continuing operations as a result of the divestiture of the Rockport business.
2 Number of employees on a headcount basis.
3 Calculated in accordance with German Act on Equal Participation of Women and Men in Executive Positions in the Private and Public Sector in Germany.
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MIXED LEADERSHIP TEAMS AND PROMOTING WOMEN Already in 2011, adidas proactively set itself the goal of increasing the number of women in leadership positions in the coming years.
Specifically, the percentage share of women in management positions is targeted to be increased globally from 30% today to 32% by 2017.
Irrespective of this, German law states that, from January 1, 2016, at least 30% of Supervisory Board representatives of publicly listed companies such as adidas AG shall be women.
As a result, the Supervisory Board and Executive Board of adidas AG have set the following specific targets to be achieved by June 30, 2017:
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The Supervisory Board will appoint one woman to the adidas AG Executive Board.—
The percentage share of women at Board -1 level will be increased from 11% (as at July 2, 2015) to 18%.—
The percentage share of women at Board -2 level will be increased from 26% (as at July 2, 2015) to 30%.A prerequisite for increasing the number of women at the highest levels of management is the general promotion of women within the company worldwide at all levels of management. www.adidas-group.
com/s/employees
GLOBAL EMPLOYEE BASE FURTHER INCREASES
On December 31, 2016, the company had 60,617 employees, which represents an increase of 9% versus 55,555 in the previous year. New hirings related to the global marketing and sales organisation aimed at further strengthening key growth areas and categories were the main driver of this development. On a full-time equivalent basis, our company had 51,899 employees on December 31, 2016 (2015:
47,435). see Table 06
Personnel expenses increased to € 2.532 billion in 2016 (2015:
€ 2.184 billion), representing 13% of sales (2015: 13%). see Note 33, p. 189 An overview of the development of our employee base in the past ten years can be found in our ten-year overview. see Ten-Year Overview, p. 212
04 EMPLOYEES BY FUNCTION 1
58%
06 NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES BY FUNCTION 1
Employees 2 Full-time equivalents 3
2016 2015 2016 2015
Own retail 35,266 32,543 27,706 25,651
Sales 4,447 3,868 4,333 3,763
Research & development 1,128 993 1,058 927
IT 1,168 1,157 1,131 1,123
Total 60,617 55,555 51,899 47,435
1 At year-end. Figures reflect continuing operations as a result of the divestiture of the Rockport business.
2 Number of employees on a headcount basis.
3 Number of employees on a full-time equivalent basis.
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Sustainability GROUP MANAGEMENT REPORT – OUR COMPANY
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SUSTAINABILITY
Our Sustainability Strategy ensures the alignment of our sustainability work with our overall business goals. While it addresses our
Our Sustainability Strategy ensures the alignment of our sustainability work with our overall business goals. While it addresses our