Dive Brief:
- As Reebok cuts staff ahead of its acquisition, parent company Adidas this week announced it would hire more than 2,800 employees in 2022. The hires would amount to about a 4.5% increase to the retailer’s current workforce of 62,000.
- The positions encompass 307 locations across 47 countries, according to a company press release. Adidas is both backfilling vacancies with the hiring spree and also adding new jobs in various departments.
- About a third of the hires (900 people) are destined for the athletics retailer’s stores, while the company is looking for nearly 18% (500 people) to fill roles in digital, IT, and data and analytics. Sustainability continues to be a hiring focus, after the retailer doubled its positions in that space last year.
Dive Insight:
As Adidas and Reebok prepare to go their separate ways, both companies announced hiring changes this week. Reebok, which is set to be acquired by Authentic Brands Group in the first quarter this year, announced it would lay off about 150 employees when the deal was complete. Those cuts were “in preparation for a new operating model” under its new parent company.
Adidas, however, is ramping up its hiring as it seeks further growth. CEO Kasper Rorsted made it clear when Adidas decided to sell Reebok that the brands were better off separate, noting that each could “significantly better realize their growth potential independently of each other.”
“Going forward, the company intends to focus its efforts on further strengthening the leading position of the Adidas brand in the global sporting goods market,” the company said at the time.
For the moment, that means hiring close to 3,000 employees in the year ahead. Amanda Rajkumar, executive board member responsible for Human Resources, People and Culture, said in a statement that Adidas wanted to “set standards as an employer.” The retailer highlighted its diversity efforts in its release, noting that it aims to have women in more than 40% of leadership positions by 2025. At the end of 2020, that metric had reached 35%.
In its last quarter, Adidas’ sales increased by 3% and the company saw a 5% rise in its DTC channel, but it was not left unscathed by the pandemic and supply chain impacts hitting most of the retail industry. According to the company, COVID-related lockdowns in Asia-Pacific, along with supply chain disruptions, stunted revenue growth by 600 million euros ($695.6 million at the time of the release) in the quarter.
