Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

In Nike layoffs or any other, cutting people with exceptional ratings does not feels right. These ratings were finalized by HR and leadership teams based on yearly performance reviews . These decisions do not give an impression that Nike values great talent. Why to have those yearly performance reviews if we don't value? Where I work , those are given serious consideration and when we decide to lay people off , folks with lower ratings are first considered irrespective of the team. Can these impacted folks bring Class action lawsuits? What I have heard, compensation was not the only issue as some folks with high compensation and lower rating have been retained. Seems like, Its all about leaders (who have say in nominating) protecting their team members on the new org chart in poorly exhibited horse trading irrespective of performance issues or compensation. Can this be a class action law-suite?

Well, I heard folks with exceptional review rating (highest possible performance review rating in company) for last year were laid off. Can they bring class action law-suite ?
I heard people with lower rating ( e.g. successful) were retained cause they were working with leaders( who have say in deciding who gets cut) from long time. Seems like these leaders protected their team and cut others irrespective of performance reviews.

The decisions that were made were done so (1) prioritizing the new structure (org chart) that we need to align too and (2) the financial drivers associated with it. VP’s were provided a $ amount that they needed to cut and they looked at their team and figured out how they were going to balance the two priorities they were given.

Tenure and compensation relative to your role and your peers has a lot to do with it. Which makes morbid short-term financial sense if the goal is to cut costs. IMO the immense value of institutional knowledge is not given proper consideration. Many of us do our jobs well only because we’ve been doing it a long time. This is a large and complex company that takes several years to understand.

Remember that Nike isn’t a family. It’s more like a sports team where your role is never guaranteed past the current season. When someone who doesn’t know your value decides you’ve been on the team too long and have become too expensive relative to your replacement cost that’s when you’ll fully understand that you work for a large multi-national corporation and you were always just filling a temporary role. The days of loyalty to employees are long gone. That part of the social contract disappeared a couple decades ago. It’s a tough but important lesson to understand.

A few experiences I’ve noticed (not all of them obviously) was… if you were on leave for the majority of the last fiscal year, and your team was doing just fine, you got cut. Justification was clearly the job wasn’t needed if it was vacant and everyone was doing a good job without you. I don’t agree with it just noticed that.

Also, lots of tenure left because it’s cheaper to bring in younger people with less PTO accrual and pay requirements. Of course some new people got cut too to avoid lawsuits, so that might have been based on past cfe’s or documented performance issues.

You will probably never know how or why you were selected, but I will say Nike has ensured your selection criteria is defensible. For every group of employees laid off they have to include a legal business justification as to why certain people were selected. The cleanest is by job code, level (which equals comp), tenure, performance rating. Nike HR and legal are masters at manipulation so I’m sure they have their bases covered, but maybe not? Maybe now is the time for a class action lawsuit

does nike print out a DEI profile
who sits on their board

Age and comp. Seems many people who were long in tenure or of a certain age were impacted.

comp

I was impacted.. I think it was a combination of tenure, current compensation (meaning if you’re highly compensated) and some horse trading by VPs, who sought to protect some teams versus others.

They probably targeted people that visited this site

Some good set of knee pads may help

Unfortunately we will never really know how we were chosen to leave. Best we can do is learn from it & if we are ever in a position to have to do something like this we know exactly how not to do it. Nike is in real trouble, the brand is failing and leadership is a joke.

Seeing at the majority of innovation requires working with factories over seas… hard to argue innovation must be done by like-minds sitting around the same table…