Thread regarding Adidas layoffs

Lol @ OP claiming to love working here - is that you HR? 😂

Long-time NAM employee here (10+ years) so I've seen some things - incompetent senior leadership team, the nepotism and croneyism in promotions (we see you MS installing your su-k-ups in senior GOPS roles), toxic HR folks who don't give a cr-p about employees, etc. The latest NAM senior leadership shuffling has been tough as well - lots of great leaders exited in the past 2 years have been replaced with HZO bootlickers (ahem NAM VP IT who is not qualified in any sense but fits the right DEI criteria I guess?). And now rumors we are going back to 4-1 starting January like our competitor across the river? Can't wait to sit in traffic for my long commute; be disturbed by loud noises all around my desk; eat overpriced bad-tasting cafeteria food; and be subject to the gossip, cliques, and micro-aggressions in the office.

No wonder morale is in the toilet, our product offering hasn't been good in years, and literally everyone on my team is looking for an outside job. This place is a joke. Wouldn't recommend adidas to anyone and can't wait to be out of here myself!

@mlvs … had not heard that. Wow. Deeply disappointing.

We really don’t have a culture of leadership here. The MDE/DDE trainings that are offered are a good start, but I don’t think they help to identify or develop leadership skills. I would love to see formalized “assessment centers.” Some kind of boot camp-like experience that you have to pass in order to be placed in a leadership role…. Such a thing should be mandatory for M2/M1 and above…. ALL FUNCTIONS.

Leadership at this company are a bunch of clowns. When the people pulse results came through with less than stellar reviews this past year, instead of listening and fixing issues brought up, one doofus decided to do “myth busting” sessions and call his team liars and gaslight them instead of actually addressing and improving their concerns.

I’m just glad that I’m leaving in a a week’s time, I cannot stand any more the lack of talent and basic business skills of some SLT members, how they are just obnoxious of what is really happening in their orgs, who is adding value and who is just going to meeting and praising people that is not even involved in the key projects.
A company where hiring manager “prioritize” the internal applicants on roles based on who scheduled a coffee chat and who didn’t is just one more sign of the nonsense and how we keep hiring VP and SVPs in HR to do pretty PowerPoint, give meaning less “awards” and parade themselves dressed in Gucci in the campus, while Michelle says in the town hall than the application process is there to make things fair and we know than 95% of the roles are already given and they make people jump through hoops without a proper intention of hiring

The return of ATM is not being considered for several reasons:

1. Management prefers employees to concentrate on their tasks and getting s#!t done rather than spend time voting on which questions they believe are important.

2. They’re tired of repeatedly addressing questions about diversity, such as the predominance of English-speaking white men in top positions, record low eNPS levels, and the absence of a clear, standardized promotion policy.

3. A lack of accountability is evident when there is no persistent hub for questions and answers. This makes it easier to track what has been addressed or ignored, as opposed to opening a window for questions, closing it, and moving on as quickly as possible.

Did we miss any other reasons here?

Sadly i think Ask the Management is not close to making a return. The fact that they answer questions after town halls on Yammer but then close the comments /thread so no open dialogue is allowed speaks to their mentality. ATM is more of a check the box exercise (“oh yes we do engage with our employees!”) than a real opportunity to meet people where they are.

The silos were Kaspar’s doing…. and while Bjørn is probably desparate that people move on, I think some of the management class that came into their level under the previous leadership are still stuck in their me-first mentality. That only causes friction cross-functionally, and isn’t helping the company establish a healthy plan.

Sure there are a lot of things to like about Bjorn and new direction. But not much is fundamentally changing - we are still making most decisions based on emotions and personal preferences instead of facts (and this is why it is unlikely we get ask the management back), still operate through highly fragmented siloed teams in a hierarchy that makes zero sense. Plus now we have lost a lot of top talent and stuck with middle management who might try their best but would largely not even qualify for the same level jobs in other companies.

So I want to stay hopeful and I certainly like new ‘vibes’ but I wish there would be more than just vibes.

"Ask the management" making a comeback? Oh, let me tell you one thing, internal comms would rather play the long game and wait until everyone who remembers it has left the company!