Sounds like we are on track to all meet in 30 days
23 replies (most recent on top)
@2yz, I would love to know what part of the company you work in because it sounds like it’s useless. The DSM, merch, tech and analytics teams I know as productive if not more than before. No more commuting, useless extra meetings, walking to meetings, etc.
The reason Nike employees don’t want to return to work is because half of them haven’t been putting in more than 2 or 3 hours of work/day since the pandemic began. They’ve grown used to the extremely lax work schedule and are now angry that they’ll now actually have to give Nike 8 hours/day again.
Truth. And a bunch of you know it. Even if you won’t admit it.
@1huf
You're a stooge.
@1huf, if you do not know how to set boundaries, this place will eat you alive. That’s on you!
@1huf well for me none of this has been an issue. 7 am meeting invites? That’s an automatic decline on my end, same with anything after 5pm, unless super critical. If I choose to “always be on” that’s my choice and nobody expects that of me. In fact my leaders impress upon us that we focus on family, rest, recovery, and mental health. They encourage us to set boundaries with work. They do NOT want us working on PTO. Another helpful tip, don’t have your Nike email on your mobile phone (unless you have a company phone, but a lot of us don’t) or if you do, turn off your notifications during your personal time. Everything you mentioned sounds like personal choices people make to work longer hours, leading to burnout. Pretty sure JD never said any of us have to. Just some food for thought.
@1dgq: You mentioned the positives of working from home and you’re not wrong about those benefits. There are definitely some very appealing aspects. Especially the cost savings, not having to work in Nike’s awful social experiment called “Freestyle” (open offices are the WORST for actually being productive and getting work done), and potential time savings.
That said everyone needs to be cautious about assuming that working from home provides a net time benefit. Just this morning I saw two news videos (I’d post links but this website is picky about allowing links) showing that since people started working from home between 50%-70% of those people have reported burnout. The reason is simple: when you work from home it’s easy - too easy - to be “on” and connected all the time. They said that since the pandemic began the average work-from-home employee has been clocking between 15%-20% more hours than they did when in the office. That’s largely due to overcompensating so employees can prove to managers that they’re actually working, and because when your office is always 20ft. away from your bedroom it’s more difficult to claim that putting in longer hours is inconveniencing you. In other words while it may SEEM like working from home has provided a net time savings the reality is that for most people it hasn’t. It has just caused them to work even more hours which in turn has led to historically high levels of burnout.
This burnout is primarily what caused “The Great Resignation” and Nike has not been immune from the impact. Over the Thanksgiving break I heard from a VP I’m close to that Nike is currently seeing higher than normal levels of employee turnover and the main culprit is those people feeling like they’re overworked. She said that working from home has created increased pressure for employees to at least be accessible, and ideally available, nearly every waking hour. As a simple example of this prior to the pandemic how many 7:00AM meetings did you have? I never had any. But in the last year in particular people have become increasingly & disturbingly comfortable with scheduling meetings as early as 6:00AM and as late as 9:00PM. Just Monday I got invited (and declined) a 6:30PM meeting to review and discuss something that isn’t even important. It obviously didn’t occur to the meeting organizer that scheduling a 6:30PM meeting is likely cutting into peoples’ personal time. That’s exactly the problem: working from home has greatly diminished the concept of “work time” and “not work time”. And don’t even get me started on how comfortable people have become demanding attention and work from other employees who are trying in vain to enjoy PTO. It is now perfectly normal for people who darn well KNOW I’m on PTO to call or send an email anyway expecting that I’m going to immediately interrupt my PTO and family time to tend to their needs. That has always been a problem at Nike and it has only gotten worse with working from home. What do people not understand about “paid TIME OFF”?????
There are also other things related to working from home that are not positives. Trying to onboard new employees is one. I don’t care what anyone says; trying to learn a new role remotely and without office face time is far from ideal. Trying to describe our seasonal color pattern library to a new employee over Zoom is an exercise in sheer comedy. My team typically onboards at least 10 new people every year and it’s been really really tough for these new hires to learn their roles remotely. We’ve lost almost half of them in under 12 months because they’re never able to fully integrate onto the team.
The pandemic happened. It wasn’t fun. But it’s now time to get back into the office.
Personally, I think it should be a team choice but I know Nike has to have a policy because not everyone can work from home and be productive (I'm sure there is some people using this a crutch preventing to get fired).
Anyway - My manager has already said they're going to be flexible with what days we want to come in the office. That works for me. I rather come in on Monday then Tuesday. Most of my meetings are Wednesdays and Thursdays... I think its not going to be super easy for us to be all hanging out in the same meeting room anyway.
Ultimately, if I had to pick, I would pick working from home full time with the occasional onsite day at my choosing. (depending on the situation I may rather come in the office, especially for those 10 hour blocks meetings starting from 7am - 6pm.)
Working remotely has made it possible for my wife to find a job that more than doubled her income because our schedules are flexible enough that we can both work and be there for our kids. I'm a much happier person (and worker) because I'm not completely burnt out from sitting in traffic for an hour coming in, and nearly 2 hrs going home. I'm sleeping better, eating better, and exercising more which has contributed to my mental/emotional wellbeing. I'm a ETW but now I can actually afford to take time off during the holidays instead of working and still losing money because of holiday office closures. And to think, all of these things are something that Nike doesn't have to provide for me other than simply letting me continue to work remotely.
@1ver It’s not so much about the fear of getting Covid. Although it sure is nice that I haven’t had so much as a cold in almost two years It’s that we have been working home for nearly two years. It is now the new normal. In that time, most of us have discovered that we were given some time back in our lives, time to spend with family, or focus on self care (exercise, sleep!) instead of sitting in horrible Portland traffic twice a day. We have discovered we like not spending our money on gas, cafeteria food at work, etc. We have discovered that we are more productive at home because we aren’t forced to work in an open floor plan surrounded by noise and distractions all day. We have embraced modern day technology and realized that most tasks truly can be done from anywhere. Remote working is the way of the future for a lot of companies. Some of us are sad Nike isn’t on board. Congrats to you that you’re happy to be back though.
taking retirement Jan 10th... peace out... mic drop....
@ecb is correct. My husband works at Nike and we sometimes joke about other spoiled Nike employees whining about returning to the oh-so-dangerous real world. My company has been back in the office since June without a single new Covid case. The transition from working at home to going back to the office took me all of a week. Then I quickly forgot I had ever worked at home. So did everyone else. We just returned to what most of us had already been doing for well over a decade.
Trust me, your entitled selves will live.
@bxz save yourself a dollar - you can leave for free
The " 40 hour work week" has invented by Henry Ford as workers before weekends also. Communiting was done by workers in the factory. That's a 103 year old concept.
It's 2021 now, we have the internet and remote VPN technology. We don't work in factories. Gas is at a all time, many of us dont live near campus. Nike needs to be innovative and allow remote work. Any other excuse is just hogwash for tax breaks and commercial real estate.
I understand being nervous about being in person but it’s really not bad.
It's not really so much nervousness, but keeping the conveniences of home and not sitting in traffic for 40 minutes round trip every day. That in itself is 173 hours a year saved a year. How much is your time worth to you?
You realize that the majority of the population in the nation never worked from home, right?
I understand being nervous about being in person but it’s really not bad.
Doubtful. Things will be turning ugly soon with the virus. Just look at what is going on in Europe.
If they do, they should give us milage reimbursement since inflation has taken its tool. Along with the highest gas prices since Jimmy Carter. Wishful thinking... I'm at the point with Nike I'd pay money to leave lol.
Only ONE person I know is excited to go back. This is ridiculous.
I hope not but my sr director seems to think we should all be on campus already
Sr directors gotta network if they wanna get VP, they can’t wait to “see their people” again
Hopefully not!
Not a chance (unless they’re absolutely insane)