Actions

Nike communicates its progress to its stakeholders, through its website – nikeresponsibility.com – backgrounders, quarterly electronic newsletters, the 2001 Corporate Responsibility Report and Community Investment Report 2002-2003. Nike’s commitment to the Global Compact is mentioned throughout its website, in select backgrounders and in its 2001 Corporate Responsibility Report.

Nike also engages stakeholders directly through one-on-one meetings and other forms of collaboration. Nike held its first formal stakeholder forum in February 2004.

Nike supports the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as an Organizational Stakeholder, and the real advances that have been made in the corporate responsibility arena in developing common reporting and assurance frameworks and systems to measure a company’s corporate responsibility progress.

On nikeresponsibility.com and in its backgrounders (attached), Nike addresses issues and initiatives related to workers and contract factories making Nike-branded products (code of conduct, code leadership standards, tiered monitoring system, independent/external monitoring, new source approval process, balance scorecard and remediation plans); environmental sustainability (long-term goals, climate change, water quality standards, elimination of organic solvents and sustainable product innovation); partnerships with the Fair Labor Association and the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities; commitment to increasing youth physical activity; community investments to increase the participation of young people in physical activity to improve their lives and to develop innovative solutions that address the challenges of globalization faced by women and girls; and Nike’s work toward internal and supplier diversity.

Nike is committed to improving working conditions in the contract factories from which it buys product. Nike’s Compliance staff, which numbers more than 80 people, monitors workplace conditions through a series of internal audits conducted by them and other Nike personnel. In additional to internal monitoring, a selection of our factory base is subject to external, independent, unannounced audits by the Fair Labor Association (FLA). In some instances, Nike supplements overall contract factory compensation by partially sponsoring after hours education programs in select footwear contract factories; and health education, management and life skills training, and mobile health clinics in select contract factories through its partnership with the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities.

Nike, in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund Climate Saver’s program, has established a series of short and long term goals to track, reduce and offset the company’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Results

Nike actively communicates with its stakeholders and encourages their feedback. Nike engages with its stakeholders through various forums and organisations. One of the most prominent ones among these is the Global Compact. In addition to the Global Compact, Nike serves as a board member of Business for Social Responsibility, the Fair Labor Association and the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities. Nike is also an Organizational Stakeholder of the GRI. In February 2004, Nike held its first stakeholder forum with a broad group of internal and external stakeholders to address current and emerging issues.

Nike believes in ongoing dialogue with outside parties – talking about the company’s challenges as well as its successes, and in the process, helping to create a greater understanding of global supply chains and how to make them better.

Although Nike recognizes there is still considerable work to do, in the last few years, Nike has taken a number of deliberate steps toward increased transparency:

**Nike was the first U.S. collegiate licensee to begin listing the names and addresses of contract factories producing certain college licensed product on its website.
**Nike invited students selected by an independent university task force to participate in contract factory monitoring and then posted their unedited reports on the company’s website.
**Nike participated in the public release of Global Alliance data drawn from worker interviews in contract factories in Indonesia (2001 and 2003), despite the critical nature of some of that information. That information can be found at www.theglobalalliance.org.
**Nike was part of the public release of the Fair Labor Association’s first monitoring report, and the FLA annual report. Additional summaries of FLA audits are posted on the FLA website on an ongoing basis. Nike has supported the FLA since its founding in August 1999. That information can be found at www.fairlabor.org.
**Nike released its first Corporate Responsibility Report on October 9, 2001 in conjunction with GRI guidelines and has a comprehensive corporate responsibility website.
**Nike has allowed hundreds of people from the media, labor, government, multilateral institutions, academia, private and non-profit sectors to visit selected Nike contract factories each year. In 2002, in Vietnam alone, Nike hosted more than 1,000 visitors in selected contract factories.

Nike tracks its performance according to GRI''s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and was one of several organizations participating in the GRI''s inauguration in 2002 as an independent organization. In 2004, Nike signed on as an Organizational Stakeholder of the GRI demonstrating its support for the GRI as a framework for common reporting standards. Through the GRI, Nike is also working with other stakeholder groups to help develop a common reporting framework and sector supplement for our industry. Currently, Nike is redefining its process for data collection and is developing the tools to help guide both internal and external reporting, including data validation and assurance systems.