“Apple knows it needs to do more to encourage diversity, but it will take time to show real results in the numbers, the company’s head of human resources said Tuesday,” Shara Tibken reports for CNET.
“The ‘diversity challenge… didn’t happen overnight so it’s not going to be changed overnight,’ Denise Young Smith, Apple’s vice president of worldwide human resources, said during the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado,” Tibken reports. “‘Diversity as a concept should be part of your talent strategy,’ Smith said. ‘It means you’re… all of the obvious things like race, gender, sexual orientation, but diversity is different… Different is our legacy at Apple.'”
“Apple CEO Tim Cook has tried to inject more diversity in Apple’s management team. He promoted Eddy Cue, a Cuban, to his role as senior vice president of Internet software and services in October 2012. Cook also named Angela Ahrendts, the former Burberry CEO, as Apple’s head of online and in-store retail. In addition, he appointed Susan Wagner, a director at BlackRock, to Apple’s board in place of long-running director Bill Campbell,” Tibken reports. “Smith on Tuesday noted that Cook has been ‘personally involved’ and is ‘incredibly personally committed’ to efforts to boost diversity at Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Diversity is good, but getting the absolute best should remain the goal. Forced diversity carries its own set of problems. Would the group be comprised of the best-qualifed people possible or would it be designed to hit pre-defined quotas? Would some employees, consciously or unconsciously, consider certain employees, or even themselves, to be tokens meant to fill a quota? That would be a suboptimal result for all involved.
The best and desired outcome is for this to work in Apple’s favor. Truly looking at qualified people from a larger pool would result in delivering different viewpoints and new ways of looking at things and tackling problems than a more homogenized workforce would be capable of delivering.
Regardless and of course, someday it sure would be nice for everyone to just be able to evaluate a person’s potential, not measuring and tabulating superficial, meaningless things like skin color and gender.
SEE ALSO:
Apple donates over $50 million to diversity efforts – March 10, 2015
Apple CEO Tim Cook met privately with Jesse Jackson regarding diversity – December 9, 2014
Apple adds Vice Presidents, more diversity to Executive Leadership Team – August 15, 2014
A message from Apple CEO Tim Cook on diversity – August 12, 2014
Jesse Jackson calls on Obama to scrutinize tech industry’s ‘lack of diversity’ – July 28, 2014
Tim Cook: Apple will release diversity data ‘at some point’ – July 9, 2014
Jesse Jackson targets tech’s lack of diversity; sends letter to Apple, Google, HP, others – March 19, 2014
Apple changes bylaws after facing criticism about lack of diversity on board – January 9, 2014