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The vision of Nike is “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the

world”. The company has survived and thrived in the most competitive environments

and now the Nike name and the logo have such high consumer awareness that the

company no longer includes the Nike on its products, but the “swoosh” logo is all that is

needed1. Though Nike has crossed several milestones, it is also plagued with

controversies, criticisms and lawsuits. Under these circumstances, what are its HR

polices and strategies are explained in this essay.

The HR objective of Nike in the long run is to increase the availability of

educational assistance programs to all the manufacturing employees worldwide. This

objective of Nike reflects in its human resource management functions. The company

has introduced the educational assistance programs because it is very important to

have workers who are willing to learn and who show the interest to develop themselves.

Hence, their recruitment policy is to consider only those employees who have an

inclination to improve their skills and educational levels. After the recruitment and

selection of employees with this kind of specific attitude, the next step of training and

development is planned and implemented. The training and development of the workers

is done by offering opportunities for general education purposes like, if workers want to

learn to read, write and fill any gaps in their early childhood education. In another aspect

the company also conducts seminars and workshops for supervisors in factories so that

they improve their production and management skills. The main advantage of this policy

to give improve the quality of human resource is to increase the value of human

resources and to create a favorable learning environment in the company which is very

essential to grow in the highly competitive globalised economy.

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The next aspect for discussion is the compensation. At Nike the wages of the

twenty thousand employees are based on the qualifications and skills and the policies

are designed so that all the hours worked (regular and overtime) are compensated. In

addition to this the workers who have shown interest in improving their skills and who

have completed any educational program are given promotions and their salaries and

perks are increased.

The company also has a detailed human resource information system to store all

the information about the employees’ profile, education and training, performance. It can

be accessed anywhere in the world by a certain group of users. The HR department of

Nike also provides employees with lots of learning tools. It provides an orientation

webpage for new employees to learn themselves about the company. Also Nike has

invested a lot of money on software which are very useful for the business and the

employees can access directly to those skill software to learn and improve their

knowledge and thereby improving the operational efficiency.

Though Nike has become a cultural and attitude icon, it has also become a

target for global criticisms of the living conditions of its workforce across the world.

Hence, Nike has developed a very comprehensive factory audit standards for the

organizations in its supply chain. The standards in the factories should match the

specifications of Nike, if not chances are given for improvement and re-audit is done.

With these changes in the HR policies Nike, has turned its focus more internally which

means that the commitment of Nike towards its labor force has increased. This change

is reflected very much in the human resource policies and strategies.

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References

1. David R. Fred, Strategic management – Concepts and Cases, New Delhi

Prentice Hall, 2007

2. Almaney, A. J, Strategic Analysis of Nike Inc., ISS 395, Chicago, DePaul

University, March, 2000 available at

http://condor.depaul.edu/~aalmaney/StrategicAnalysisofNike.htm