The brief

Nike established a new business function, Workplace Design & Connectivity (WD+C), to lead large-scale workplace transformation programmes across Europe. WD+C Europe was responsible for delivering the expansion of Nike’s European Headquarters in the Netherlands, impacting around 2,500 employees, alongside the relocation of its Italian headquarters from Bologna to Milan, impacting approximately 200 employees.

Although programme management capability was already in place, Nike recognised that the scale and pace of change created significant people impacts that required an integrated change management approach. CMC was engaged to provide hands-on change support to both HQ programmes, as well as change leadership to the WD+C senior leadership team.

The challenge

Both multi-million Euro programmes were well underway by the time CMC started. Delivery was moving quickly, with people already experiencing major changes to their working environments and ways of working, yet no formal change management approach had been developed or implemented. Change activity needed to continue at pace, while change management approaches, engagement plans and communications were designed and introduced in parallel. In addition, a previous attempt to introduce a change manager had not been successful, meaning senior leaders were sceptical about whether change management would genuinely add value. We needed to build trust quickly, demonstrate tangible impact and stabilise the people side of both programmes without disrupting delivery.

Establishing credibility and clarity at pace

As both programmes were already in full flight when we joined, our immediate focus was on quickly understanding the scale and nature of the people impacts while still maintaining delivery momentum. We carried out early change diagnostics across the European Headquarters expansion to identify how different business areas, buildings and employee groups were being affected. This highlighted highly variable experiences, ranging from minimal disruption to significant change for teams moving into newly acquired buildings and adopting new ways of working, including activity-based environments. Working closely with the programme manager, we rapidly established credibility with senior stakeholders and positioned change management as an enabler of delivery rather than an additional overhead.

To secure senior buy-in, we introduced joint senior stakeholder briefings with the programme manager and reshaped existing communications to focus on outcomes, benefits and clearly articulated impacts at business area level. We developed a simple, visual engagement approach and change timeline that set out leadership responsibilities, decision points and key activities. This clarity helped leaders to understand their role in leading change, created alignment across the programme team, and provided a shared reference point for decision making as the programme progressed.

Building local change capability and addressing resistance

As delivery continued, we identified the need for dedicated Change Agents within the business to support teams through transition. We defined the role, clarified expectations and ran onboarding workshops to ensure individuals had the skills and confidence to operate effectively. For teams that had already moved without change management support and were experiencing resistance or dissatisfaction, we designed and facilitated targeted retrospective interventions. This included workshops to surface concerns and a survey to capture broader feedback. Insights were reviewed with the programme team and several practical improvements were implemented, helping rebuild trust and improve day to day experience in the new working environments. We also introduced a new engagement process for major moves, where employees were able to be involved in specific elements of the design, such as the selection of graphics, branding and meeting room names. Additionally, we acted as the primary liaison between the programme and the Works Council (the employee representative body), ensuring they felt appropriately consulted and aware of the changes.

Supporting consistent communication and learning from experience

We worked alongside leaders to ensure change communications were timely, clear and consistent. We supported this by drafting emails, preparing materials for team meetings and aligning messages to the agreed engagement timeline. To strengthen longer term capability, we also embedded an aftercare approach, appointing After Care Leads within business areas to capture lessons learned, resolve issues post-move and feed insights directly into planning for future relocations. We created success metrics, baselining satisfaction with the existing workspace before the move, then validating similar satisfaction measures against the new workspace three months after the move. This compared perceptions of the move with the actuality of the new workspace, checking the experience had been positive and identifying any useful learnings once they had been able to make use of the new spaces for a while. We also identified cultural resistance to some moves stemming from a fear of being isolated. To address this, we re-branded the new campus sitemap from ‘Core campus’ and ‘Off campus’ to the ‘East Side’ and ‘West Side’, and showed the near equal split of people across the two sides. This helped teams feel less removed from the previous ‘main campus’.

Strengthening engagement during the Italian headquarters relocation

In parallel, we supported the relocation of Nike’s Italian headquarters. Change diagnostics highlighted that engagement had been limited, particularly for employees remaining in Bologna, and that the existing top-down culture made it difficult for concerns to be raised openly. We gained leadership commitment to introduce an employee feedback survey, creating for the first time a clear and safe route for questions and concerns. Results were shared transparently with employees, including through an all staff meeting, and translated into agreed actions; this were very positively received. Key actions included putting various mechanisms in place to ensure that information was accessible, and ensuring feedback was received and acted upon. A set of operating norms was developed to cover not only operational issues but also how to work effectively in the new workspace. We also identified some changes with a major impact on how staff worked in the new office; these included a significant reduction in storage, and the move for managers from individual offices to being part of an open plan workspace. We worked with HR to pick up priority communications, focusing on getting managers on board first, Drawing on materials and approaches developed for the European Headquarters programme, we then implemented a clear communications strategy and a consolidated timeline to support the complex, multi-phased relocation.

Leaving a lasting legacy

Alongside the formal programmes, our consultant acted as an informal coach across leadership levels. For example, they worked with HR and senior stakeholders to address behavioural challenges within a team which needed realignment through a facilitated interactive offsite and follow up interventions. These included finalising and signing off as a team a set of core values, and looking at how to embed these in daily activities. Feedback from the team was very positive.

To ensure Nike could replicate success in the future, we also developed a comprehensive WD+C Europe Change Management Toolkit. WD+C was about to embark on a number of similar relocation and expansion programs across Europe. These were likely to be led by a range of resources, such as project managers, business leaders or local resources e.g. HR. These resources might not have much or any change management experience. The toolkit was designed to take them through a step by step approach to identifying and managing change management activities, ensuring a consistent approach and good practice change management delivery across WD+C projects and programs. The toolkit included the end-to-end change management approach, roadmap, key deliverables, success measures and questionnaires, and practical tools including templates and examples to support future expansion and relocation initiatives.

The difference we made

We successfully embedded change management into two high-pressure workplace transformation programmes that were already in full flight. Senior leaders gained confidence in the value of change management, and the change element of programme assurance scores – which had scored amber shortly before CMC started – improved from amber to green. Employees experienced clearer communication, greater opportunity to be heard, and better support through complex transitions. All relocations were completed on time, with post-move feedback overwhelmingly positive in terms of the process and communications: early after care surveys showed satisfaction ratings of 97%. Critically, WD+C was left with stronger internal change capability and a repeatable change management toolkit to support future workplace transformation initiatives.