Sometimes I feel we’re just an endless stream of U & L bands- let’s face it, we’re just going where the Nike ship points us. But are there any E + bands that try to leverage the info to better their teams? Not trying to you, but just hoping someone that matters hears.
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Having spent a lot of time with E and S bands I would agree that they are pretty much just as powerless to affect change as U and below. The best an S band can do for his or her team is at least act as a buffer for the negative effects that might roll downhill from above. What we're talking about here is who has decision rights within any given organization and lately it seems the trend has been a much higher concentration of decision rights at the VP level and less autonomy granted to S bands and below. The pendulum always swings between these two extremes so hopefully it will balance back in the future to allow more impactful decisions to be made at the lower levels.
The other challenge that I think employees are dealing with is a new era of "performative care" which manifests with new practices of surveys and talk about engagement and career development initiatives but they don't really translate to a meaningful change on the ground... Hence the performance theater of "we care about you" which is honestly not really how any big company should set expectations with employees. This can cause a cognitive disconnect when employees see so much communication about what the company says it cares about but then doesn't manage to land in terms of reality. I honestly think anyone working at a big company like Nike should understand their place is -in many ways- a small cog in a big business machine and no one should ever think the machine is going to care all that much about one cog. I know this sounds really cynical but it's much closer to reality and helps me to not expect much out of all the performative theater that is put out there to create the veneer of caring.
Best advice I've been given in the past is to understand work in any company is a transactional effort between your time doing tasks intended to drive revenue and boost shareholder value with the expected result for the worker to get a paycheck from the company. Anything like a sense of family, purpose, fulfillment and happiness has to be derived mostly outside of work. This isn't what HR likes to tell the masses but it certainly would lead to less employee disappointment in the long run to temper expectations and it's more authentically true in our modern capitalistic American society.
@1hg1, how do you know that MP and HR employee read this forum, daily?
@1ysq: I feel like I know who you're talking about, and if it is 100% agree with you there - then again, there's probably many in the same situation. You have a point though, E / S bands can only do as much as their LT empowers them to do. EES is great in theory, but in reality the retaliation for a poor engagement survey response from a team is real. Nothing really changes, just pseudo caring and constantly asking how everyone is doing, but the ask & lack of respect for employee time continues.
Reality check; E and S bands employees cannot do much to improve/change the culture; it has to start at the absolute top - Nike ELTs. Most, if not all, S and E employees are order takers. In fact, many should not even be in such positions. There is an E employee whom I know well (I wish I can say his name here), he is an amazing talent and a person. Sadly, he is stock reporting to another E band employee. She is so bad and clueless. She is holding him back, though that will not last much longer (he is way too smart for that). He personally helped me during my lowest point at Nike; THANK YOU and Cheers, W.
Every HR employee reads this site daily as does MP himself, how else can they take the pulse of their dying culture?
LOL, yes. HR is reading this thinking to themselves, "Hmm... looks like they want to be treated better, but we can't just give them free stuff. What'll they be asking for next?"
I really hate that this conservative influenced austerity garbage is the new normal despite Nike k–ling it financially. Maybe the Biden administration will rub off on the business world now that the COVID relief bill passed and the world didn't end.
Lmao. Clearly the HR VPs aren’t doing a damn thing about the stuff here because there so many outstanding violations with ZERO follow up. HR s—s beyond measure.
E band here, and I do read these forums– and have them in the back of my mind when thinking about/working on team culture.
Many do, S band here and multiple HR VPs brought this forum up at town hall meetings before. Cant speak to whether it betters teams but ya leaders are reading here no doubt