In one email reviewed by Bloomberg, a vice president who sent two of her kids to Nike day care petitioned Parker and other executives, including Chief Operating Officer Eric Sprunk and HR-head Monique Matheson, to reconsider. She described how access to the NCDP helped her rise through the ranks. She didn’t have to worry about her children during the day; when she was a nursing mother, she didn’t have to leave campus to breastfeed.
What’s more, some employees said, the change is emblematic of Nike’s failure to adjust a corporate culture that at best ignores the professional stress faced by women in particular. Last year the company ousted a number of senior executives after an investigation related to sexual misconduct, but it is still facing a gender discrimination suit. Most recently, female track athletes signed with Nike publicly complained that the company financially penalized them when they got pregnant. (Nike said it improved the policy last year but failed to notify all athletes.)
Nike says the opposite is true—if anything, this change is part of a redoubled commitment to women’s empowerment in general and female employees in particular. Since 2006, the number of employees at its Oregon headquarters has more than doubled to more than 12,000, growth that’s strained the day care program. The NCDP has three sites in three different buildings on the campus. The new set-up will open up day care to more employees, while offering similar benefits, pay, and better career opportunities to staff at the centers, the company told employees in an email.
“We aim to make all of our benefits inclusive,” Sprunk said in an email to an employee reviewed by Bloomberg. That, he added, “includes providing this benefit to the more than 500 families who can’t take advantage of it today. I would ask you to also consider the experience from the lens of the parents who have been on the waitlist.”
Nike has long positioned itself as a champion of female empowerment, and it’s increasingly targeting female consumers. In February, the company released a 90-second ad, narrated by Nike endorser Serena Williams, featuring dozens of women breaking sports stereotypes and gender barriers. As of now, the company’s women’s business accounts for less than half its men’s revenue, but it’s growing nearly twice as fast. “We think 2019 is going to be a true tipping point for women in sport,” Parker said earlier this year. “With more participation, more coverage and overall more energy.”
The recent criticisms of Nike’s corporate culture, then, have been jarring. Nike’s female employees occupy the same demographic the company is betting on for sales growth. And while convenient, affordable child care benefits all parents, it’s especially important for women, who are more likely than men to drop out of the workforce after they have kids.
“Child care is so expensive—that’s a huge barrier for women in particular who are looking at: ‘I just had a child. Does it make sense for me to return to work given my income and the cost of care?’” said Julia Barfield, a senior manager at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, who focuses on early childhood education. If subsidized childc are, not unlike what Nike currently offers its workers, were universally available, U.S. GDP would grow by $702 billion in 10 years, in part by freeing up women to work, according to one recent analysis by Moody’s.
Companies don’t typically fill in that gap. Nike is among just 3% of companies to provide on-site child care services, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. Another 4%, including Starbucks and Best Buy, offer subsidized back-up care for when regular arrangements fall through. Earlier this year a group of 1,800 moms at Amazon petitioned CEO Jeff Bezos to add a back-up care benefit.
Even as they asked Nike executives not to go forward with the proposed changes to the NCDP, employees acknowledged their relative good fortune. They know that having access to high-quality child care at work is an extraordinary benefit. They described it as a powerful tool for recruiting and retention—an incentive to work at Nike and a reason to be proud of the company culture.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.