Apple makes progress on diversity

The document which can be accessed here shows that Apple only hired 1,475 black employees and 1,633 Hispanics, although it is possible that there are some backfill or part-time employees, who do not fall under federal guidelines. Among executives, senior officials, and managers, almost 83 percent are male, and 83.5 percent are white.

Apple Inc has made progress on boosting gender and racial diversity in its United States workforce, a regulatory document filed by the iPhone maker shows.

Black employees formed 8.7 per cent of the total USA workforce as of August, rising slightly from eight per cent in the previous period.

The subject was also recently in the news when Apple’s Director of Worldwide Inclusion & Diversity was hired away by Twitter – prompting an online backlash after it was found that he was a white male.

The tech giant unveiled new information about the demographics of its workforce in the USA in a recent report, which showed that the number of white employees dropped from 61.3% in 2014 to 59.5% in 2015.

About 30 percent of Apple’s USA employees were females as of August, compared with 28.7 percent.

In August 2015, Apple released its diversity report with a lot of fanfare.

The proposal by shareholder Antonio Avian Maldonado II says Apple has been “painstaking slow” in increasing the representation of minorities in its leadership.

But speaking of the public face of Apple, the least diversity, and most resistance to change, has come from the company’s C-Suite. The EEO1 hasn’t kept pace with the American work force in the last half century or changes in business.

It argued that Apple’s support for female and ethnic minority students, as well as its policy of actively seeking out “highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups to include in the pool from which Board nominees are chosen”, has more practical upside than the “accelerated recruitment policy” requested by the proposal.

Apple strongly advised shareholders to vote against the proposal, but nevertheless, there will be a vote held during the company’s shareholder meeting on February 26.

In any case, this is just the start of 2016 and Apple has ample time to make up the numbers in the subsequent future.