Workplace diversity is a topic that has attracted increased interest because of its numerous benefits to the company. Cultural diversity results when employers hire people from different ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. The aim is to nurture a company culture where employees respect differences, treat each other equally and receive similar treatments and opportunities for advancement and growth from their employer.
Everyone knows the benefits of inclusion. They include higher employee engagement, increased collaboration, stronger brand identity, improved profits, and reduced turnover.
The following are ways of creating a diverse workplace culture and how Apple has done it.
Post Openings on Diverse Job Boards: A diverse team comprises individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds. These are employees from poor communities and those from elite families. Posting openings in various places attract a lot of applicants, thus enhancing diversity. Some potential applicants belong to minority groups, those with disabilities, fresh graduates, and those advanced in age. Employers can also ask for diverse referrals in order to attract potential applicants from underrepresented groups to the company. In fact, they can reward employees who refer various candidates to the company just to show the workforce how serious the issue of cultural diversity is to it.
Feature Content Discussing Diversity on the Career Page of Your Website: Use the company website to highlight the company’s diversity statement, and feature the current initiatives. You can go a notch higher and reference it in each job description so that new applicants understand what the employer stands for and expect of them when they join the company.
Understand Unconscious Bias and Build Awareness: Unconscious bias includes feelings of prejudice hidden underneath the surface. Company leaders should address this bias type by highlighting how others are impacted by it and their actions to root it. They can ask employees to review their personal biases and assumptions about others. They can record instances when they stereotyped others because this helps them become aware of their biases and replace them whenever they’re tempted to stereotype individuals.
Promote Pay Equity: Companies conscious about diversity create an even playing field. They should provide fair opportunities to their employees. In fact, employers can leverage analytics to pinpoint underpaid employees yet doing similar responsibilities and roles. Managers can identify existing pay gaps within their team and assess patterns in units or departments in order to get the source of underlying issues. It’s important to identify an underpaid trend in certain groups of employees, such as people with disability, color, race, age, and gender.
Implement Diversity Training: Employers should train their employees about how cultural differences affect their work and interactions at the workplace. The diversity training should cover time management, communication styles, conflict management, and self-identity. The employer can make the training optional instead of mandatory. In addition to internal resources, companies should use consultants to build customized training programs for the entire organization and those performing function-specific roles.
Embrace Holidays of all Cultures: Building awareness about diversity and greater inclusivity includes acknowledging different religious and cultural holidays. In fact, managers can close a meeting by asking their teams how they will celebrate an upcoming holiday. Employers can use their company’s intranet to create awareness about multicultural holidays and religious celebrations. They can show respect for these days by being flexible and not scheduling meetings during holidays.
Create Resource Center: Leaders can strengthen their company culture by celebrating their employees’ differences. Managers can invite employees in their units to share their traditions and backgrounds at the end of the meeting and transfer that information to the company’s resource center available on the intranet. The information includes cultural practices, foods, dressing, songs, and much more. These efforts are geared towards fostering diversity and inclusion across the company.
Blended Teams: Your team will learn more about diversity from members of those cultures. So supervisors should not focus on specific geography; instead, they should have diverse talent because it provides an enhanced perspective that spurs creativity on the team or department. Therefore managers should invite individuals from different cultural backgrounds, gender, and age to work on a new project or initiative.
Develop and Implement Company Policy: A company that focuses on creating cultural diversity in its workplace assesses areas where any form of discrimination can exist. It evaluates its policies and interpersonal interactions, including addressing internal issues. In fact, employees leave organizations due to poor interpersonal interactions. Therefore organizations should rethink their policies, address negative processes and nurture positive interactions. One of the critical items that a company policy should have is how to report discrimination in the workplace and potential measures to take against the perpetrators. It should eliminate sexism and racism if it wants to create an equitable workplace.
Offer Targeted Scholarships and Internships: Organizations keens in building a diverse team offers high-value scholarships and internships to individuals from underrepresented or minority groups. These efforts help such groups advance more quickly and hold key roles within the organization. Further, offering diverse mentorships allows everyone in the company to grow and form closer employee relationships. Managers can create mentorship programs in their departments to help foster diversity.
How Does Apple Manage Cultural Diversity?
Apple has intensified its efforts towards becoming a more inclusive and diverse company. It has a diversity page that shows how the tech giant is slowly becoming “a better reflection of the world we live in.” Here are its statistics.
Underrepresented Group
Over 18,000 employees are from underrepresented communities. The figure has increased by 64% and makes up approximately 50% of the company’s US workforce. These employees are Hispanics, Latinos, and Blacks. For instance, the number of Latino employees has grown by 80%, and those in leadership have risen by nearly 90%, while the number of blacks has increased by 50%, and 60% more have been promoted to join the leadership team.
Gender
Female employees have risen by over 70% worldwide, and 85% are in leadership. It has intensified its efforts to create a more inclusive leadership by hiring in the following ways. 43% of the lordship roles and 29% of the R&D leadership roles are filled by applicants from the underrepresented community in the US. 37% of leadership roles and 26% of the R&D leadership roles are filled by female applicants globally. The majority of employees in the company are white male employees. Male employees represent 66% of the entire gender and white employees, while 34% are female employees. The 2022 US race and ethnicity male employees comprised 47% white, 27% Asian, 14% Hispanics/Latinos, 9% blacks, 3% multiracial, and 1% indigenous. Apple has a long way to go before becoming more diverse. However, the company is committed to creating pay equity, racial equity, and justice.
Apple’s Action Plans for Each business Line
Diverse Representation in Leadership
Apple hires leaders from different backgrounds because the brand understands that this is a powerful driver of progress. These individuals work to grow and develop the organization’s next generation of leaders from within it.
Further, the company employs qualified managers from underrepresented groups such as the Black and Brown communities. People’s backgrounds, ways of thinking, and identities are different, making their teams more innovative and stronger.
It achieves that through an expanded global mentorship program. The pilot program was set in the US and the UK and targeted the underrepresented communities in these areas. The program has been expanded globally in order to enable more employees to learn the company’s experienced mentors.
Equitable access to career development support and programs is the starting point of equal opportunity. Developing future leaders equitably through the current leadership begins with a new-hire orientation, succession planning, and much more. The company is able to achieve it through consistent processes and resources.
Hiring a Workforce from Diverse Backgrounds and Experiences
Apple creates products that are sold across the world. This requires true innovation, which is achieved through a workforce with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Apple has been making constant progress in creating and maintaining a community that mirrors this diverse and ever-changing world.
It has achieved it through inclusive hiring standards and processes that ensure diversity is reflected at every recruitment stage. Huge progress has been made in hiring and recruiting a diverse team for the engineering, technical and leadership roles. Further, Apple’s hiring managers and recruiters undergo mandatory training to help them understand inclusive hiring practices. The goal is to help these managers eliminate inherent biases as well as create an equitable hiring experience for everybody.
The tech company has invested in expansive diversity outreach as well as external partnerships with organizations such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and others. The partnership enables the company to access potential talents from underrepresented communities.
Create a Pay Equity
The company’s firm and longstanding commitment is to ensure pay equity. Apple wants to pay employees of all genders, engaging in similar work, and with comparable performance and experience the same amount.
In fact, employees of all races and ethnicities in the United States get equal pay as long as they meet the said requirements. Apple’s recruiters don’t ask about the applicants’ salary history when hiring them; instead, they base the basic pay on the roles and evaluate it every day to eliminate any gaps.
