You can not separate the goals of Nike's diversity efforts from its goals to engage its highly diverse customer base. Nike wants the composition of its staff to mirror its customer base. Three of Nike's goals for diversity and inclusion are that, one Nike wants to give back to historically underserved communities. Two, Nike wants to advocate for the rights of marginalized groups and three, Nike wants to educate it's employees on issues of diversity inclusion and to minimize the effects of unconscious bias and prejudice. As one example of how Nike fulfilled the first goal of giving back to underserved communities, here it is. With the help of community experts, Nike designs footwear to promote health and prevent disease in the Native American Community, the Nike Air Native N Seven. The name of the effort came from the Native American idea of seven generations of wisdom. All proceeds made from selling these shoes, which were sold through the Native American Community Centers and tribes are provided for youth sport and physical activity programming with the Native American communities. The communities that benefit include some of the most impoverished and under-resourced populations in the United States. One example of Nike's advocacy of marginalized groups is in its testimony provided in 2009 to the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. In this testimony, Nike advocated for non-discrimination in the workplace for the LGBT community. In addition to this testimony in 2012, Nike hosted the first ever summit of LGBT sports leaders from across the country. The summit met at Nike headquarters to discuss how to rid the sports world of homophobia. Around the time of the summit, the Nike rainbow hued Free Run 5.0 shoe came out. All shoe sale proceeds were donated to the LGBT sports coalition Finally, to enhance inclusion among its teams, Nike runs trainings for staff emphasizing respecting differences, leveraging strengths, and maximizing opportunity for everyone. These trainings include simulated scenarios that educate employees about how to foster inclusive environments, and how diversity can encourage creativity and innovation. It's important to note that at Nike, inclusion is a most important success factor driving engagement. The most inclusive teams at Nike were 82 times more likely to be engaged that the least inclusive teams. These findings which were reported by a third party consultant speak to the importance of and continued attention to inclusion and unconscious bias trainings that Nike plans to implement over the next several years. As we heard in the interview with Dr. Gasman, companies will see a host of consequences from not prioritizing diversity and inclusion, including retention issues, team performance problems, and negative attention for the organization. Next, we'll look at how specific team roles support Nike's diversity and inclusion efforts.
