Apple overhauls employee benefits with longer parental leave, improved education reimbursements
Apple on Thursday announced to employees in a company-wide memo that it is expanding workers' benefits, including longer parental leave, an expanded donation matching program, subsidized student loan refinancing, and education reimbursement for all classes.
The new "perks" for both corporate and retail employees were revealed by Apple to Fortune, who spoke with the company's head of public relations, Denise Young Smith. Apple's HR chief revealed that the company's corporate matching program, which has existed since 2011, will be expanded to include all employees in all countries.
Apple also plans to match employees for time spent on philanthropic endeavors, paying up to $25 per hour of non-profit work, capped at $10,000 per employee. Apple currently has 98,000 employees, with most of them hourly and working in retail.
Another change being instituted by Apple is full acceleration of stock benefits in the event of an employee's death, providing assistance to surviving family members.
And under the new parental leave policy, expectant mothers can take off up to four weeks before delivery and 14 weeks after, while expectant fathers and other non-birth parents can take a six-week leave. The changes were announced to employees in a company-wide memo sent out on Thursday.
Smith joined Apple in 1997 and primarily worked on the retail side of the business. She took over all HR responsibilities at the company this February, and as vice president of Worldwide Human Resources, she reports directly to CEO Tim Cook.
Under her leadership, Apple has paid a particular focus to diversity, producing its first-ever diversity report in August. And last month, Apple announced it would give $20,000 in college scholarships as part of an ongoing diversity initiative.
The new "perks" for both corporate and retail employees were revealed by Apple to Fortune, who spoke with the company's head of public relations, Denise Young Smith. Apple's HR chief revealed that the company's corporate matching program, which has existed since 2011, will be expanded to include all employees in all countries.
Apple also plans to match employees for time spent on philanthropic endeavors, paying up to $25 per hour of non-profit work, capped at $10,000 per employee. Apple currently has 98,000 employees, with most of them hourly and working in retail.
Another change being instituted by Apple is full acceleration of stock benefits in the event of an employee's death, providing assistance to surviving family members.
And under the new parental leave policy, expectant mothers can take off up to four weeks before delivery and 14 weeks after, while expectant fathers and other non-birth parents can take a six-week leave. The changes were announced to employees in a company-wide memo sent out on Thursday.
Smith joined Apple in 1997 and primarily worked on the retail side of the business. She took over all HR responsibilities at the company this February, and as vice president of Worldwide Human Resources, she reports directly to CEO Tim Cook.
Under her leadership, Apple has paid a particular focus to diversity, producing its first-ever diversity report in August. And last month, Apple announced it would give $20,000 in college scholarships as part of an ongoing diversity initiative.
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Nice to have, but you know as soon as Apple runs into a down turn in business it will all go away. Company should never give what they can not support in both good and bad times. When things get bad and you take these kinds of perks then people tend to leave even faster and the good people leave first.
Excellent negative spin there Debbie Downer.
Taking your rationale to its most logical extreme results in the most profitable company providing its entire workforce no more than statutory minimum wage for fear of a future fall in profitability.
The reality is that companies and their workforces will adjust accordingly to their conditions and outlook. A struggling company with an understanding workforce will reduce perks or even layoff staff for survival of company and the workforce.
The trick is getting the balance between workforce perks and productivity just right.
One of the skills which distinguishes the good companies and managers from the mediocre.
I think Tim is finally getting Apple to realize that they're no longer going bankrupt. They've been running the company that way since 1997, and it showed.
Agreed. Unless actual competitive pressures push a company to offer richer "perks," there is no reason for a company to throw money away.
Apple has enough petty cash to sleep through a decade or two of downturn.
That is never a good reason to relax tight control over a business. It would be better to buy back more of their own stock in light of market wide stock pressures, plus Wall Street's unwillingness to let AAPL rise more than $103.
Most of that "cash" is held overseas and will never make its way back to the US...unless someone like Rand Paul gets into office (at least he has a plan to enable companies to "repatriate" those billions under a sensible tax adjustment).
You're saying that giving people more time off...away from work...makes them more productive? How does that work?
It's always difficult for a large company to retain staff and keep them feeling satisfied with who they work for and enthusiastic about their job.
I applaud Apple for this.
Good move, Apple.
Clearly Apple has a resource issue. Listen to the latest the Debug podcast that featured former Apple employees. They said when Next bought Apple and the Next management team came in they basically ran Apple like a start up. That was how Steve chose to run the company. That might have worked back in the late 90s and early 2000s but it's impossible now. Back then there were quarters when Apple actually lost money. Now a bad quarter is $6 billion in profit. I think Apple needs to do whatever is necessary to attract the best engineers (that are also being pursued by Google,me facebook, etc). In fact might not be a bad idea for Apple to open an office near Seattle. I'm sure there's a lot of really good software engineers up there they could poach.
You're saying that giving people more time off...away from work...makes them more productive? How does that work?
Did you think before writing that?
Yes. Did you?
Keeping a startup mentality is a very good idea no matter how big the company. The alternative is... Microsoft.
Nice to have, but you know as soon as Apple runs into a down turn in business it will all go away. Company should never give what they can not support in both good and bad times. When things get bad and you take these kinds of perks then people tend to leave even faster and the good people leave first.
You have a weird, flawed and very pessimist view of the business world, if not the world in general.