Thread regarding Adidas layoffs

Adidas, 2022 May.
A long queue of people, happy enthusiastic faces, entering the adidas campus. The call was given. All employees must return to the campus, the Linkedin and yammer posters started their night job, lauding the great return, followed by a myriad of emoticons.
Yet, nobody is really happy. The price is 180 per share, lowest since almost a decade, even lower than during the pandemic. One might wonder what happened, when 75% of the employees are dejected with the current management, yet elated faces everywhere. Feverishness, painting a very grim state of affairs, the mass layoffs of the previous years, a culture of discomposure permeating through the pores of every employee, from P levels all the way to M and some S level. The same state of things of several years ago at Henkel.
Employees NPS has reached an all time low, with the company having more detractors than promoters, to a level where managers instruct reports to share the inputs upfront, before submitting, just to make sure they chose the right answers. Truth be told, more people would prefer the company goes bankrupt - a fair retribution, most think, for all the pains and horrors of the last years, and the ones to come, no doubt. The source of all this? Nobody will dare to say the name - the one that shall not be named, the one that has been in a constant cold and hot war with people from his near circle, middle management, down to the people packing the shoes in the oursourced factories.
"Bottom line by all means!"
Workers Council, a mere group of people with no capacity. They are the foe that must be disbanded. The offshoring of positions to Spain, Portugal, Colombia, India, illegal layoffs, has taken its toll on the willingness to do anything worthwhile for the employees, be it salary increase on par with the inflation, or fighting the masqueraded layoffs. There always is a g-n pointed at their head: "WoCo must disappear, they do not let us progress" Detailed reporting of employees' performance, abusive layoffs, abusive contracts, discrimination, racial scandals, prioritized hiring from low cost countries - "some things must be hidden, we cannot let them stop our growth! We must find a scapegoat, be it a new diversity quota HR hire, or whoever. No matter the costs! WoCo must be reorganized, we must find the right people that play our cards right!"
Yes, racism is rampant, even with a diversity quota HR head. "No one can say now we don't do the right thing! We even had the antidiscrimination training thing! It was mentioned all over the place" Yet nothing has changed, it just looks better on paper, gloss and emptiness. Hires and salary ranges are done based on ethnicity or country of origin, which show up in the resumes one way or another. Not too high expectations on this matter, from a company where the big boss said "we love our new brand promoter, Wozniacki. What a beautiful Danish name!" That remark in one of the quarterly meetings, went silently unnoticed, like many other remarks in a highly competitive, cut-throat, discriminatory environment.
The Reebok sale and the subsequent adidas shares buyback plan had no outcome, no boost in the stocks price.
Back to the return to office queue. People talking about hopes that the office work policy is just transient and that the work from home will be the new way to go, soon. Yet, detailed reporting of presence in the campus are expected - "we are rooted in sports! We must sweat in the campus! We must make sure people are here! We are not Google, we are not Apple, we are not a work from home company, we don't want that! Consequence management must be enforced, examples be made!"
Yes, consequences, fear, and lack of any vision about the labor market, neglect of employees and their health. adidas is well known in the region for the sweatshop type of work, sick people, massive turnover, high number of people who develop health problems, unpaid work and overtimes, all hidden under the flexi-time word. And also white collar deaths by exhaustion, very well hidden under NDAs and supposedly chronic illnesses.
They went down slightly, during the pandemic, but will soon have a comeback. Smiling empty zombies are about to have a comeback. Bottom line it is!
A group of students are marveling at the babylonian buildings, huge and posh, Ikea and dream job thoughts cross their mind. "One day I will work here" thoughts cross their minds. Yet, the percentage of working students that were sick due to burnout caused some schools to stop the collaboration with adidas and send the students to some other companies. "We need fresh blood, not old people. We need to get rid of them! They do not fit in the campus image. Do it!"
People brought over from across the world, singles preferred due to self-evident reasons, happy to sweat for the best brand, yet, getting into a spiral of hopelessness, with no exit opportunities, in a region and country where true opportunities for foreigners, mostly, are missing altogether.
"Did you hear X left last month? Did you hear that Y left? Z's been with adidas for 15 years, yet they left adidas". Long standing employees, leaving a company that no longer matches their core values.
People are looking enviously across the street. They say people in the jumping cat brand have it better, many adidas people made it there, and they have a normal life now. Yet the other brand is also plagued by some rumours, alas on a much much lower scale.
"I can't wait to bring this to X in my one on one. I hate her guts anyway. Z got now an M2 promotion, so she should stay overtime and make it happen" The girl looks quite passionate about what she is saying. A toxic environment and culture, where team members will do anything to score first in the team lineup. Friendships end, where future promotion promisses are made. Broken promises mostly, included. A culture of mistrust, deeply rooted in the company's core values that they like to brag about. "You cannot trust anyone, even if you do the right thing or play by the book, you will be sacked anyway. Watch your back, dude!"
"More than 100k applications just last year - we clearly are a sought after employer" Yet this is just the PR. adidas faced challenges hiring, even in low cost locations, potential employees do not even show up for the interviews, first requirement not being satisfied - "do you support home office?" "We do", for now. The devil is in the employment contract, small print and "subject to change".
"We must force them all back into the office. The remote work contracts and jobs can be reorganized, closed, made redundant, we must find a way. I want to see them work hard, here, in the office, every day. Herzogenaurach, Porto, Zaragoza, Portland, Amsterdam, all!"
Q2 quarterly meeting: "We had outstanding results!" Yet, no more hires, the hiring must be abruptly stopped and they must take advantage of the great resignation. "I don't want to hear this is a hiring freeze" says some finances hot shot, "but we will not hire new people", perhaps he was missing the word for what it actually is, a hiring freeze. "Our HR costs are too high! We must save! Projects must be cut! Prioritization!" New layoffs looming.
So who's to blame for the 175 per share?
An over-adversarial and gluttonous leadership, a numbers first, employees are disposable direction, broken down and petrified middle management, petulant workers? The self-gratulatory WoCo that does not do anything to raise mindfulness about Unions, protect the employees from ill treatment and be articulate, overall? Is it the wrong HR approach for hiring overcompetitive and fair play lacking people sometimes, in just the right positions?
There are marvelous people at adidas, yet they tend to be less and less, all looking across the street or elsewhere.
Some still hope things will change, that things will be how adidas was when people worked as a big family, earlier, and wishing for themselves to get to reach the retirement age, or early retirement in Aarhus, for some others.
Bottom line it is!