Nike should consider adding a real worker to the board of directors. Someone who is likely to retire, who can represent employees. Maybe mass layoffs would not continually occur if employees were valued more.
8 replies (most recent on top)
Yep, at some point people realized his is how Ponzi schemes work. The people who get in at the beginning circle the wagons so only they're able to benefit, with diminishing returns for anyone who comes after them. The trick is to make any new Nike employee think they're getting in at the "right time" and will also reap the benefits of the people who got there before them. The problem is when greed kicks in and people start to see through the facade. People are starting to see a Nike "career" is non-existent, there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and not even the "benefits/perks" are there anymore.
Shareholders do not run companies but employees do. Shareholders do not create any value. In business school we were taught to increase shareholder wealth. We were taught this because a group of CEOs decided this was the most important thing decades ago. Supposedly that same group changed what they believe is most valuable (see article below) but until those words become actions we will continue to see these cuts.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/08/19/the-ceos-of-nearly-two-hundred-companies-say-shareholder-value-is-no-longer-their-main-objective.html
No, Nike is not just a corporation, it is “special” as in “short bus special”!!! No one lays off people in a manner as cruel and stupid as Nike, no one. Most corporations don’t reward people for doing less with more like Nike. People rise up as they hire more people and build their own fiefdom..... and thus you have way too many people. Can you imagine the infighting g right now just to keep ones headcount, not because they get anything done but rather because it’s what matters there.
It is a noble idea - to appoint a person to represent employee at the board of directors table - though it does not represent reality and it will never happen. Few other people already explained why, so I am not going to repeat that. If Nike has proper Human Resources department with an effective and efficient recruiting policies and practices, we would not be in the mess we are in at the moment. There has to be clear justification for any position either new hires or promotions, which clearly has never been the case. It has been mostly upper management adding headcounts to increase the size of their kingdoms and appear to be important, powerful, busy and indispensable. Parker allowed this to go on and on. JD is now responsible for cleaning up the mess, which sadly will affect many employees and various levels. It is evil though a necessary evil as far as shareholders and Wall Street are concerned.
There's a system that puts workers first. It's called Communism. It's never really worked out. Everyone but the North Koreans have given up on it for running their economy.
what I learned working for a listed company bottom line it's all about the share price
If all layoffs were executed like the 2017 layoff, I might agree. The current layoff is a necessity to reduce all the redundancy. There are too many layers of VP's, Sr. Directors and Directors. The title "Director" used to mean something, and it still does at other companies. At Nike not so much. People shouldn't be promoted because of who they know or to give them more money for doing a good job, but because they are qualified to do the position. A lot of Sr. Directors (especially), Director and VP's don't know how to do their jobs and now they need to stop s—ing up resources.
If MP had done an adequate job of managing operations in the first place, you wouldn't be seeing these layoffs. JD is doing what investors are expecting of him, which is cleaning us the mess that MP left behind.
This is corporation. Meaning that it is owned by shareholders. Shareholders appoint board of directors. Board of directors “report” to shareholders.
What shareholders care about is that the company they invested money in bring back return on the capital invested. Either though dividends or share price increase. In normal times (not FRS inflated bubble like today) share prices is a function of EPS (earnings per share). So, Board of directors have to make EPs go higher.
You can do it by: reducing costs, increasing revenues, if not to go into details.
So, if the company believes that there are too many employees, and they’re inefficient (which is the thinking about it now for CDA), they cut it.
So, why would shareholders appoint somebody from the “workers” who will block cutting costs/employees? They’re not insane.