Nike employee training and development

Running head: TRAINING & DECVELOPMENT PROGRAM 1

TRAINING & DECVELOPMENT PROGRAM 19

Signature Assignment

Prepare a Training & Development Program

by

Dominique Wells

National University

ODV 606

June 2019

Signature Assignment: Prepare a Training & Development Program

Organization and Position Summary

Nike Inc. is an organization that was founded by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS). The organization’s primary focus has always been discovery and innovation, aiming at the provision of both experiences and products for athletes. Initially, BRS served as a distributor for Onitsuka Tiger, a Japanese shoemaker, a relationship that ended in 1971 when BRS introduced its line of footwear. Consequently, Nike Inc. built itself to become a renowned brand in the United States, dominating about half the athlete market share. Furthermore, through diversified communication to reach as many customers as possible, by the 1980s, Nike had made associations with games and directly introduced its product to its target market. The organization’s mission is to inspire athletes all over the world through its innovations, defining athletes as anyone that has a body. Nike’s vision is to maintain the creativity legacy it has already established as well as to develop business opportunities that offer it a competitive advantage and add value to the organization’s shareholders (Brohi et al., 2016). Thus, innovation is Nike’s vantage point in the industry, which the corporation seeks to exploit to retain its market dominance.

The job that the paper will focus on is the converse sales associate position. The role of the position holders at Nike Inc. is to ensure that the organization can maintain high sales from converse shoes, which have now become part of the company’s production line owing to their increased demand for use in the court, on the stage and in the streets. The position holder is expected to be highly adaptable to change to fit into the organization. They must also be alert and aware of the shoe trends in the market among a range of consumer groups including thinkers, rappers and ordinary individuals to keep Nike Inc. updated on what consumers want and enable the organization to better fulfill the needs of its customers ("Converse Sales Associate at NIKE INC," 2019). Therefore, the converse sales associate position at Nike Inc. requires the holder to be capable of controlling sales efforts as well as consumer relations. It is also their responsibility to ensure that Nike stores selling converse shoes, deliver excellent customer service, and employ top-notch selling techniques to facilitate product flow and support merchandising.

Needs Assessment

Short-term and Long-term and Goals

Nike’s short-term goals focus on increasing the sales that the organization makes and maintaining its market share. First, the company seeks to maximize sales to increase its profit margin and maintain profitability. Secondly, the organization aims to support high-quality production to continue to retain its status as a choice brand among consumers within the market. Thirdly, Nike is determined to keep up with market trends to ensure that it meets the changing consumer needs and remains relevant to their tastes and preferences. All the efforts described above collectively seek to fulfill the short-term goal of facilitating organizational growth through the exploitation of a Direct to Consumer (DTC) approach that allows the distribution of products straight to the consumers through walk-in stores across the globe and online sales (Brohi et al., 2016). Thus, Nike’s short term goals not only seek to better organizational outcomes but also consumer satisfaction.

Moreover, the organization is looking to widen its profit margin by penetrating new markets, through the maintenance and exploitation of the excellent wholesaler relations available to Nike. Furthermore, the corporation is also looking to expand the independent monitoring programs that are available to it to include both educational institutions and government agencies to increase the publicity of its operations. Moreover, Nike aims at adopting the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) United States law in the implementation of quality standards in its footwear factory. The corporation is also looking to fund open forums and university research projects to explore matters surrounding business responsibility and global manufacturing practices like air quality standards and independent monitoring (Mahdi et al., 2015). Hence, Nike’s goals in the short run seek to cover organizational, consumer and workforce needs to make it both an employer and brand of choice.

In the long run, Nike seeks to achieve a variety of goals, including increasing the availability of its products to consumers by building new stores in top locations like Japan, North America, and West Europe. The corporation also intends to expand the parameters of its wholesale market to make it a key driver for developing retail business and increasing its percentage contribution to annual company sales. Moreover, Nike seeks to elicit higher levels of customer satisfaction by increasing consumer awareness about the benefits of its products and developing new technologies that will further enhance product quality and usability. Increased consumer awareness about the organization’s products is expected to positively impact sales and strengthen Nike’s direct impact through the regulation of consumer business and the enhanced effectiveness of both retail and wholesale market strategies. Furthermore, the organization hopes that in the future it will be able to increase product pricing owing to brand superiority and increased product demand especially in luxury and specialized product markets (Brohi et al., 2016). All of the mentioned long-term goals that Nike seeks to realize aim at eliciting financial benefits, including increasing annual profits, heightening share growth, and return on investment (ROI) as well as growing shareholder dividends.

Decision to allocate Resources to Converse Sales Associate Position

The converse sales associate job is crucial to the success of Nike in the realization of both its short and long term goals because it is directly affiliated with ensuring that the organization’s products reach the target market in high numbers. Qualifying for a converse sales associate position at Nike Inc. requires that the applicant possess knowledge of daily sales targets and key performance indicators (KPI) as well as contribute to their realization. Additionally, the job requirements of the mentioned position dictate that eligibility is highly dependent on the ability to match both merchandising and operational performance standards and have a basic understanding of the apparel, footwear and accessories being sold ("Converse Sales Associate at NIKE INC," 2019). Thus, based on the job requirements outlined above it is evident that the converse sales associates in Nike play a functional role in ensuring that the organization realizes its fundamental objectives of meeting consumer needs and maintaining high sales levels. This sets the stage for the realization of the other organizational goals.

Resultantly, training converse sales associate position holders is essential because it can directly contribute to enhancing the organization’s value by facilitating the betterment of its human resources. Nike’s human capital is part of its intangible assets, which research has deemed crucial to creating and sustaining a competitive advantage in the market. Through the implementation of training and development programs for the position holders mentioned above, Nike can increase its productivity and performance as well as enhance its capacity to innovate. According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) organizations that make substantial investments in training and development depict shareholder returns that are 86% more than those of their counterparts that do not incorporate training programs within their operations. Training and developing employees, especially those in Nike’s sales department, is vital because it contributes to the enhancement of their competence, know-how, education, and work relations, all of which are crucial to the successful execution of job tasks aiming at the realization of stipulated organizational goals (Noe, 2017). Thus, Nike’s investment in training and developing converse sales associates is justified as it directly contributes to the realization of its short and long term goals.

Matching Organization Resources to Human Resource Needs

The rate of goal attainment in Nike increases with the organization’s ability to match its objectives to the needs of its human resources. The process that can be applied to facilitate the realization of increased efficiency of meeting corporate goals through the alignment of organizational needs with those of its human resources begins with the determination of the organization’s current and expected position in the future. Hence, Nike’s first step in matching organizational needs with those of its workforce will require the assessment of the current human resource capacity. Analyzing the existing workforce will result in understanding the talent that is available and the compilation of a skills inventory for all current Nike employees. The evaluation can be facilitated through a variety of means, including requiring employees to evaluate their capabilities through surveys, reviewing past performance records, or combining both approaches (Akhigbe, 2013). The examples of the skills that are crucial to a converse sales associate at Nike Inc. include the ability to identify potential buyers, qualify leads, influence purchases and close deals (Ingram et al., 2015). See Figure 1 in the appendices for an example of a self-evaluating skills inventory.