Training and Development at Nike Company - Case Study Example

Nike Sport Company The Nike Sport company is the largest distributor of sports outfit in the world; whose brand is common in the sports arenas. In perspective, the success of the company is believed to be owed to its highly trained workforce that the company employs in its diverse branches around the world. The company believes in utilizing the talents, borne out of its diverse workforce, a phenomenon that necessitates the company to use adequate and feasible means in its training and development processes. In perspective, Nike employs more than 40,000 employees, who fit into the various categories of designing, marketing, distributions as well as logistics that manage and run the operations of the company around the world. The success of Nike in the industry has driven most research into the training and development processes that the company employs. In most of these research studies, the company’s culture in Nike has been pointed out as a key cornerstone in the training process of the company. In perspective, the corporate culture of the company contributes a great deal to the quality of employees that the company gets in any recruitment process, and the way in which they develop ton match the requirements of the company. In addition, it studies note that more than ever, most intellectuals in marketing and other fields desire to work for the company, notably because the brand has a unique place in the market, dressing even the most elite performers in the athletics field. What is unknown to many however is the corporate culture which the employees breathe and work from, that is the main foundation of the learning and training in the company. At the company’s headquarters in Portland, it is easy to note that every building in the compound is named after a famous athlete that the company associates with (Donnelly 44). For example, the name of Michael Jordan, one of the most famous basketball players in history stands tall in one of the buildings, to whom Nike designed the first running shoes with a sponge in their soles. Further, the name of Mia Hamm, one of the most famous women footballers in history stands in the Nike Campus, to whom the company designed various sports shoes as well as the outfit for most of the games she played. In perspective, there are more than twenty excellent athlete names in the Nike College, which builds the Nike campus with a unique competitive spirit, that enables the company’s employees to grow, get inspired and work towards maintaining the greatness of the company. Further, Nike commits itself to enable the top management to be instruments that facilitate the company’s growth. The leaders in the company are trusted to provide training and learning opportunities to employees and senior managers in order to bring out the talents and capabilities that lie within them. This involves engaging the staff in a way that helps them to achieve quality and produce better output in their capacities, which may be termed as talent multiplication (Goldman, and Papson 61). Thus, the company aims at bringing the best out of their workforce through training and development of the leaders in the hierarchy of management. In addition, the company’s major headquarters in the world is endowed with state of the art gym facilities, designed for use by the employees of the company. For example, the headquarters in Oregon has adequate training facilities, that the employees attend fitness classes, perform various running exercises and bike racks, on which the employees can spend their evenings or lunch breaks practicing. The company’s human resource manager alleges that this enables the employees to live in a Nike Spirit, and enables the company to maintain employees who are passionate about sports and the company’s products. Nike employees therefore constitute of a team of persons who care about sports and the company benefits by instilling a culture of sports, that encourages the employees to learn more in their fields of competence in respect to the tastes of specific consumers in the market (Goldman, and Papson 67). The company’s core beliefs also contribute much in outlining various key principles and competencies of the management that lead to excellence. These may be identified as coaching, leading, ability to drive and instilling inspiration to the workforce. These principles are important in defining how the company settles on pathways that are aimed at reaching the potential of every employee in the company. In this respect, the company trains their managers to be role models who nurture talent and inspire individuals and teams in the workplace, who are motivated to work independently and to creatively come up with new ideas of value for the company. It is important to note that a company’s incentive to the employees determine both the quantity and quality of the workforce. In this perspective, workers at the Nike Company worry less about the welfare of their young ones when they are busy in the company’s operations. This is because Nike has unmatched facilities in childcare and elementary education for the young ones. This poses a huge recruitment and training advantage to the company, owing to the fact that the company demonstrates its extended care to the families of the employees and therefore most workers are willing to work for the company and develop their skills to be relevant to the company. With many other such employee non-wage benefits, research has revealed that the company has sourced many talented individuals from other organizations as well as encouraged the development of talent and skills in the company, so that the employees are assured of their jobs even in the times to come (Kirk, and MacPhail 29). Further, the Nike Company employs leaders who are endowed with important skills in planning, nurturing talents and aligning strategies that enable employee teams to grow in the company’s culture, which has greatly improved the performance of teams of employees around the world. This perspective also includes the fact that the leaders are endowed with key competencies in managing team performance and appraisal, which is a driver to the greatness of any company in the world, as this process acknowledges the talents and inspires employees to offer services that match the company’s expectations (Katz 74). This offers an interactive framework, where managers pay attention to the teams’ concerns that are important to improving the quality of service and output in the company. This feedback mechanism is facilitated by a concise feedback tool, which assists managers to identify weak points in the teams, which may need further supervision and lead to the exploitation of other opportunities in the future. It is evident that the development of employee capabilities and development is of paramount importance to the company. Nike gives an insight of this critical process, in which the culture of the company has stood out as a motivating factor in this process. In perspective, companies will continue to come up with employee training and developing strategies that will equip employees with the skills that drive the company’s vision forward. Works Cited Donnelly, Peter. Taking Sport Seriously: Social Issues in Sport mangement. Toronto: Thompson Educational Pub, 2011. Print. Goldman, Robert, and Stephen Papson. Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh. London: Sage Publications, 1998. Print. Katz, Donald R. Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World. New York: Random House, 2004. Print. Kirk, David, and Ann MacPhail. The Game Sense Approach: Rationale, Description and a Brief Overview of Research : Paper Prepared for the Nike Premier Training Project, January 1999. Loughborough: Institute of Youth Sport, 2000. Print. Read More