Apple splits HR and retail lead duties with new hire

AppleInsider · February 8, 2023 9:16PM

Carol Surface joins Apple as the company's first Chief People Officer, taking over human resources responsibilities from the current head of retail, Deirdre O'Brien.

Apple hires new head of HR

Apple hired Deirdre O'Brien in 2019 to take over people and retail under the title of senior vice president of People + Retail. It was a role placing her in charge of the over 500 retail stores and over 70,000 staff.

According to a memo shared by CEO Tim Cook and seen by Bloomberg, the people aspect of O'Brien's role has shifted to a new executive -- Chief People Officer. Apple hired Carol Surface from her previous role at Medtronic Plc to take on the position.

Chief People Officer is Apple's name for the head of human resources. With many Apple Stores unionizing and complaints amongst employees being made public, the new hire will definitely have their hands full.

Surface will report directly to Tim Cook and begin the job in March. Apple's leadership page hasn't been updated to reflect the change as of this publication.

Read on AppleInsider

danox · February 8, 2023 9:41PM

Good idea Deirdre should’ve been head of retail from day one after Johnson instead of those two Britishers hired from the outside the company.

edited February 2023

lkrupp · February 8, 2023 10:26PM

danox said:

Good idea Deirdre should’ve been head of retail from day one after Johnson instead of those two Britishers hired from the outside the company.

What qualifies any of us to make a statement like this?

kimberly · February 8, 2023 10:46PM

HR are one and the same across all companies and I mean that in the worst possible way.

sbdude · February 8, 2023 11:05PM

Ah, Chief People Officer. By far, one of the most ridiculous C-Suite monikers, and usually the one most interested in "disrupting" the establishment.

mikethemartian · February 8, 2023 11:16PM

I remember when I worked for Agilent 20 years ago they pretty much outsourced the whole HR department to Fidelity.

fred1 · February 9, 2023 3:32AM

Maybe since she’s the third person to be in charge of HR, her acronym should be C3PO!

entropys · February 9, 2023 10:47AM

kimberly said:

HR are one and the same across all companies and I mean that in the worst possible way.

Yes, once HR reports only to themselves and aren’t usefully embedded with the externally facing people delivering the products and services for which the entity exists, they turn inward, building their empires on mountains of reports other have to fill in, identifying risks and urging risk management that is always aversion, launching great and good campaigns for CV padding purposes, and most importantly harassing and making life intolerable for the front line workers.
and they can do this exact thing in any organisation they choose to pollute. The bureautastic can be as easily transferred as it is the same.

get serious · February 9, 2023 11:40AM

Deirdre has worked at Apple for 30 years. She was promoted to Retail and People from Operations, having actually started out in shipping/receiving at Apple in the early 90's before Steve's return. I do admire her growth from the trenches that instilled her with a people perspective which was sorely needed when she was promoted.

blastdoor · February 9, 2023 12:04PM

entropys said:

kimberly said:

HR are one and the same across all companies and I mean that in the worst possible way.

Yes, once HR reports only to themselves and aren’t usefully embedded with the externally facing people delivering the products and services for which the entity exists, they turn inward, building their empires on mountains of reports other have to fill in, identifying risks and urging risk management that is always aversion, launching great and good campaigns for CV padding purposes, and most importantly harassing and making life intolerable for the front line workers.
and they can do this exact thing in any organisation they choose to pollute. The bureautastic can be as easily transferred as it is the same.

QFT.

That nicely sums up HR at my employer.

danox · February 9, 2023 3:42PM

lkrupp said:

danox said:

Good idea Deirdre should’ve been head of retail from day one after Johnson instead of those two Britishers hired from the outside the company.

What qualifies any of us to make a statement like this?

Americans are suckers for the British accent when they hear it they assume competence, Tim got confused with that guy from Tesco’s, and the Burberry queen was paid more than Tim Cook for less competence.

Hiring somebody from Tescos is the equivalent to hiring somebody from Walmart retail to run all the Apple stores. How do you think that would turn out?

edited February 2023

strangedays · February 9, 2023 8:02PM

sbdude said:

Ah, Chief People Officer. By far, one of the most ridiculous C-Suite monikers, and usually the one most interested in "disrupting" the establishment.

Actually my staff prefers the term “people” to “resources”. We are people, not raw materials.

filemakerfeller · February 10, 2023 2:45AM

get serious said:

Deirdre has worked at Apple for 30 years. She was promoted to Retail and People from Operations, having actually started out in shipping/receiving at Apple in the early 90's before Steve's return. I do admire her growth from the trenches that instilled her with a people perspective which was sorely needed when she was promoted.

And yet, she hasn't handled the complaints of the retail workers well. Apple has been extraordinarily generous in some ways, but people are still unhappy. I would really like to know why.

Apple splits HR and retail lead duties with new hire

Comments