In a time of extreme disruption and enforced distance, how do you keep teams engaged and moving forward? It’s a question on every business leader’s mind, from Main Street to the largest multinational enterprise. For resilience to take root, organisations of all sizes need to put employees first, leading with support and giving employees the tools they need to stay productive.
Iconic retailer Nike is receiving the Employee Experience Award for its sustained focus on digital transformation and employee experience.
When coronavirus first hit in early 2020, Nike quickly pivoted to adjust to new market conditions and the closure of many of its offices, expanding its use of Slack to help its teams stay connected and meet its ambitious product launch schedule. Without missing a beat, the sportswear brand shipped hundreds of new products in 2020, including the Air Jordan XI Jubilee and Air Jordan XI Adapt.
At the heart of the company’s ongoing growth strategy is a focus on human-to-human connection, with both customers and employees.
Inside Nike, employees embrace new ways of working together, driving the company’s successful digital transformation. Slack is one of the tools of choice. Slack users at Nike have more than doubled, from 14,000 to 30,000, organising their work, engaging with each other across both public and private Slack channels, and sending more than one million Slack messages a month. And unlike with siloed email inboxes that remain hidden from view, the creative work and ideas shared across Slack have become a searchable archive of inspiration for the entire organisation.
Better still, the benefits of working in a channel-based platform extend beyond the boundaries of the organisation. Nike employees are also using Slack to collaborate with external partners, such as creative agencies, contractors and vendors, using hundreds of shared channels to connect Slack instances.
Further fuelling Nike’s digital acceleration and competitive edge internally are more than 2,000 custom Slack apps and bots. These integrations help teams work faster on what really matters to the business, like the Slack bot that automatically alerts employees when demand suddenly spikes on Nike.com. This workflow eliminates the lost time spent switching between applications and helps provide a better customer experience when traffic loads spike. Nike also makes it simple for employees to give each other ‘high fives’ right in Slack – a key way to stay connected and celebrate shared successes, regardless of location.
Nike is just getting started. With innovation in its DNA, there is little doubt the industry pioneer will continue to inspire its ranks and surpass expectations, no matter what challenges lie ahead.
