Nike follows trends set by other major Fortune 500 employers. The trend right now is getting people back in the office as much as possible. We’ve seen numerous headlines lately of “XXXX is now requiring its employees to come back to the office.”
Working from home does mostly work and it’s definitely preferable for most employees. But it would be disingenuous to claim that absolutely nothing is lost when most people are working remote.
There are three important variables here: Right now the economy is either heading towards or may even already be in a recession. That means the company-employee relationship will change to where employers have more leverage than they’ve had in recent years. Second, Nike is in an innovation and product slump, further increasing pressure to “get things back to where they were”. That would include people returning to the office. Third, a few years ago Nike invested more than $1 billion building out the campus. They didn’t do that to facilitate people working from someplace other than the campus.
Those three factors, and I’m sure others, contribute to Nike wanting “rear-ends in seats”. Covid did in fact change work dynamics and showed that working remotely can suffice IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. But I think in recent years we all saw too many “Work has forever changed!” news stories and convinced ourselves that it really would be a permanent shift.
Ultimately however “the man” is in charge, just as has always been the case. And “the man” wants people back in offices because that is to his benefit. We’ll lose a few people but make no mistake about it, there aren’t going to be large-scale defections because people have to return to the office. Almost everyone needs to work and to be completely honest there aren’t many other employers in the region that would be an “upgrade” from working at Nike. Despite what you read on this website most employees are well aware of this.
I’d prefer to work from home as much as possible but I thought the day would probably come when things went back to the way they were.