The key focus of our rewards approach is to attract, retain, and motivate individuals through remuneration and benefits that are inclusive, fit for purpose, and competitive in the marketplace – thus enabling us to achieve our strategic objectives. To promote a high-performance culture, it is essential that we focus on performance management to ensure fair and equitable reward and recognition.

Performance Management: Our global performance development approach, called #MYBEST, remains a key enabler of our high-performance culture. In 2024, we focused on enhancing the quality of our performance conversations, enabling our people to set clear expectations, engage in continuous feedback, and provide holistic, fact-based, and inclusive assessments. 

Compensation Management: Compensation at adidas has a dual focus of ensuring employees are compensated fairly and equitably for the role they perform, while also creating a culture of rewarding performance. The adidas total compensation management philosophy enables educated compensation decisions based on external market reference and internal equity. It also considers the skills, experience, and responsibility of each individual. Our variable compensation programs engage and motivate employees by reflecting their activities input, while driving a culture of high-performance. To do this, adidas offers the following variable compensation plans:   

• •  Short-term incentive programs
  • Profit participation programs  
  • Long-Term Incentive Plan (‘LTIP’) for senior management

Stock Purchase Plan: Participation in the Stock Purchase Plan is open to employees in many countries. This amounts to almost half our global workforce (excluding Retail).  

Employee benefits: These include monetary and non-monetary programs that supplement wages or salaries on a discretionary or non-discretionary basis and are based on benchmarks. Programs can be offered globally, regionally, or locally and can be statutory or supplemental. Employee benefits may consist of medical, disability, accident, or life insurance. They also include initiatives to support physical, mental, and social well-being (i.e., employee assistance programs).

adidas offers flexible working concepts, leadership competence related to work-life integration, and family-oriented services, which improve employee engagement by supporting their unique needs and promoting working efficiency. 

Flexible work: We offer part-time and full-time contracts. 

Working locations: We also provide flexibility in working locations, part of our Remote Working Concept and Working from Elsewhere Policy. The Remote Working Concept provides corporate employees with the possibility to work from home 40% of the time and manage their daily working hours. The Working from Elsewhere Policy gives corporate employees the possibility to work from anywhere outside of their office location for ten days a year. 

Additional time off: Along with annual, maternity, paternity, and parental leave, we provide various additional time off options (excluding sick leave), such as time for moving house, marriage, sabbaticals, and leave to take care of close relatives and family members. These vary by country in line with local needs and legislation. 

Parental leave and re-entry: For parental leave and re-entry, we have programs in place to provide employees with advice early on and options for their return to work, taking into consideration flexible working hours and work locations. In Germany, employees on parental leave are guaranteed their original positions, which are only filled temporarily while they’re on leave. In the US, in addition to regular parental leave for new parents (up to ten weeks at 70% of their salary), adidas offers an extra two weeks of paid parental leave. Furthermore, our special parental bonding allows parents to stay home for up to six months within the first 12 months after their child’s birth or placement. While unpaid, it offers parents the opportunity to stay home longer to take care of their new arrival and adjust to their new lifestyle. Latin America provides an extended parental leave approach across its market, giving mothers 24 paid weeks to spend with their children, while fathers and partners receive 20 paid days. In addition, mothers can work fewer hours for one month immediately before and after their maternity leave period. 

Family and childcare: We maintain a family-friendly environment and infrastructure. At our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, we provide parent-child offices and a bi-lingual childcare facility. We also run children’s camps to support working parents during school holidays.  

We offer a wide range of learning and development opportunities, including online learning resources and interactive learning that facilitate employees’ personal and professional growth. We provide various digital learning and development opportunities on platforms such as LinkedIn Learning, Udemy and DataCamp. They offer equitable access to learning content and allow employees to upskill or reskill based on their needs.  

We know that to continue being successful as a company, we need to help our employees develop essential skills and leadership behaviors. We aim to inspire and nurture talented and diverse leaders who exemplify our culture and leadership skills. We offer various ongoing formal learning initiatives to elevate and enhance our leadership pipeline:  

Leadership development experience: Interactive learning sessions designed for every level of management across all markets and functions. They include our People Leader Experience (PLE), Manager Development Experience (MDE), Director Development Experience (DDE), and Executive Development Experience (EDE).  

adidas Functional Academies: The Functional Academies organize regular learning days (quarterly or yearly) for respective employees to focus on their career development. 

Global High Potential (GHIPO): Program The GHIPO program gives us the opportunity to identify and develop global leaders who are ready to step up their leadership responsibilities. It aims to strengthen the participants’ business acumen skills, build peer relationships, and provide cross-functional and cross-cultural exposure. 

adidas 360°: After a successful pilot in 2022 and a final introduction in 2023, we continued adidas 360° as a leadership development tool in 2024. It involves soliciting feedback from multiple sources, including managers, direct reports, and other stakeholders, to gauge how senior leadership’s behavior is perceived. It provides valuable and critical feedback, driving both professional and organizational growth. 

Our adidas Workplace Concept is an activity-based working concept which means that employees no longer have assigned desks and instead choose from a variety of rooms and spaces, dependent on their needs. 

The adidas Workplace Concept starts well before our work does, ensuring our commute to work is integrated into local transport options, so we arrive ready to tackle the day. Within our office environment, we can perform based on our needs, whether that’s at a desk, in a kitchen hub, a focus space, or anywhere in between. 

Like all athletes, recovery is an inherent part of our day. Sport and wellbeing are reflected in our workplace on multiple levels – from sport facilities to reflection rooms dedicated to prayer and meditation. 

Our adidas Workplace Concept enables us to perform at our best, leaving room for local and cultural adaptations that give each of our workplaces a unique touch and our employees the flexibly needed to succeed in an environment that works for them.