Diversity in a company is very important, it represents the similarities and differences that exist among people. The more diversity in a company, the more ideology that is created that could lead to company growth. Diversity is characterized as a group not as an individual.
There are two levels within diversity that the company must reach. The first level is surface level diversity which includes gender, age, race, religion, and culture. The second level is deep level diversity which includes values, personality, ability, attitude, and work preferences.
Both levels are very important to the workplace because they both have a direct and indirect effect on performance, motivation, success, and interactions with others.
Apple believes in being open to new ideas and new people. They believe that diverse teams are what make their innovation possible. For example, their female representation is steadily increasing, 36 percent of Apple’s employees under 30 years of age are women.
That’s an increase of 5 percentage points for Apple since 2014. Women make up 29 percent of Apple’s leaders, which reflects a one percent point increase from July 2016 to July 2017.
A software engineer from Apple named Grace stated that “If we want a product to appeal to and work for a big group of people, it needs to be built by a diverse group of people”. Apple truly believes in Grace’s statement, they have it posted on their diversity page.
Every year Apple works harder to include more perspectives, from July 2016 to July 2017, more than 50% of Apple’s new hires were from minority groups including women, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Native Hawaiian. Apple has made it a personal goal for their employees under 30 reflect an increasing diversity.
Apple has also made it very clear that they are open to all “people of all backgrounds, who can bring leadership, technical skills, and a spirit of collaboration to Apple” including veterans.
Apple created Diversity Network Associations, also known as DNAs, which according to them are communities centered around shared beliefs and shared interests.
They welcome and help Veterans transition into today’s workforce. Another diversity issue that Apple has achieved is pay equity in every country that they operate in, where “women earn the same as men when you factor similar roles, markets, and performance.
Apple has been rated one of the Best Places to work for LGBTQ Equality by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and has had a perfect Corporate Equality Index for nearly 15 years.
Personality and Values are two very special attributes to the deeper level of diversity. Personality are the characteristics of a person/group and Values are what a person/group believes to be important in life. As we touched on, they are part of what makes the company culture.
Maintaining a company culture that people wish they have have, and that is exactly what Apple has done for the tech world. One of Apple’s easiest company culture trait to point out is their drive for innovation. Apple has employees who are seeking growth, new ideology, and more technological advancements.
Apple wants to be the change. Apple’s drive for innovation has been stated to be a reason for such big success, thus giving it a competitive advantage against competitors such as Google and Samsung.
According to an analysis by Pauline Meyer, the following are the main characteristics of Apple’s corporate culture: top-notch excellence, creativity, innovation, secrecy, moderate combativeness.
Apple values top-notch excellence, in fact, Steve Jobs was known for firing employees who did not meet his expectations which is what makes Apple unique.
Apple only hires the best of the best in the labor market and they encourage their employees to always give one hundred percent through incentives and rewards programs.
Apple also values creativity among all other skills because it’s what they feed off of to come up with new ideas to satisfy their customers, if you have ideas Apple will take you.
We have touched upon innovation, as the culture supports very rapid growth advancements. Innovation is the “heart” of Apple, it’s what they are about, motivating employees to create new and better products.
Apple’s secrecy trait is also how Apple has managed to stay keep its intellectual property and lastly the competitive environment which challenges Apple’s employee’s to ensure that they “have what it takes to work at Apple”.
Many companies now a day lack diversity and don’t have a desirable corporate culture which leads them to decrease their growth and innovation as a whole.
All companies should take on the challenge of hiring a diverse workforce, it should be a goal to work towards having people of all backgrounds with all types of experiences, after all the company is the one that wins and employees don’t feel like minorities and they have to belong to a certain group at work.
In my moral opinion, diversity comes with civil rights equality and pay equity. It’s only fair that people who perform the same job get paid the same no matter what gender, religion, race, and age.
We are in the day in age where the world keeps progressing everyday and we all need to grow that drive for innovation that Apple has and else we will fall behind the workforce.
Providing your employees a company culture in which they are comfortable and happy in boosts their motivation as well their performance, which is why it’s important to connect with the company’s personality and values.
Apple is able to motivate their employees to not only do they’re job effective and efficiently, they also make sure the employees enjoy doing it by using both Intrinsic and Extrinsic rewards .
Intrinsic motivations uses internal rewards to motivate the employees. The employees are motivated to do a task because they find pleasure and enjoyment in doing so. They will have a feeling of gratification and fulfillment in achieving the task.
According to Sir Jonathan Ive, the man attributed with the creation of iPad and iPhone, “Our goal and what gets us excited is to try to make great products”.
Apple makes sure that all their employees are proud and in love with the brand so the employees would feel inspired in developing Apple to be the best instead of feeling forced. Apple makes sure their employees are given jobs that are not easy, instead they give them challenging ones.
The employees are pushed to their maximum potential so that they could improve and have better performance and show their worthiness of working at Apple. The employees will feel respected because they are believed that they have the potential to achieve challenging task and thus strive for good performance results.
Apple uses extrinsic motivation by giving rewards such as money, gifts and recognition to motivate the employees to keep doing a great job. This is also a way that Apple attracts jobseekers and finds loyalty in their employees. Some of Apple’s extrinsic motivations includes free iPod shuffle or iPhone and product discounts.
It’s actually cheaper in the long run for the company to give products to their employees rather than raises, which leads to the issue at Apple of the difficulty in moving up.
