NKE Nike Inc

By Sara Germano 

Nike Inc.'s top human-resources executive told employees Wednesday that the company "has failed to gain traction" in hiring and promoting women and minorities, weeks after complaints of inappropriate workplace behavior led to a leadership shake-up.

In a memo to staff reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Monique Matheson wrote that the company wants "to create a culture of true inclusion. As part of our plan, we need to improve representation of women and people of color."

"While we've spoken about this many times, and tried different ways to achieve change, we have failed to gain traction -- and our hiring and promotion decisions are not changing senior-level representation as quickly as we have wanted," she wrote.

Ms. Matheson disclosed that 29% of the company's vice presidents are women, even though the company's global workforce is evenly split between men and women. In the U.S., 16% of vice presidents are nonwhite, she wrote. Nike, which has 74,000 employees, has several hundred vice presidents, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Nike spokesman had no immediate comment.

--Joann S. Lublin contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 04, 2018 16:09 ET (20:09 GMT)

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