Cook said it “seems likely” that the majority of teams won't
be back before June 2021. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has
historically had an office-centric culture, but the CEO implied that the
company's success this year during the pandemic lockdown could enable more
flexibility to work remotely in the future.
Still, Cook has been adamant publicly about his desire for
staff to ultimately return to the office.
“There's no replacement for face-to-face collaboration, but
we have also learned a great deal about how we can get our work done outside of
the office without sacrificing productivity or results,” he told staff,
according to people familiar with the comments. “All of these learnings are
important. When we're on the other side of this pandemic, we will preserve
everything that is great about Apple while incorporating the best of our
transformations this year.”
Cook added that because of the challenges of recent months,
Apple will be giving employees in many regions an additional paid holiday
scheduled for January 4. Other companies, including Alphabet's Google, have
also given staff an extra paid day off recently.
Apple's employee donation programme is having its strongest
year ever, the CEO also noted. Since the initiative began, more than $591
million has been donated to charities and employees have volunteered more than
1.6 million hours. The company is making a $5 million donation to organisations
helping those hurt by COVID-19, Cook said.
Several other Apple executives spoke during the town hall
meeting, including the chiefs of retail, legal, environment, marketing,
services, hardware engineering, software development, operations and machine
learning.
Dan Riccio, senior vice president of hardware engineering,
called remote work a “huge challenge” for device design that is usually done in
lab settings. He said travel restrictions in March were particularly tough
because that is when engineers typically travel to China to help kick off
manufacturing of products launching in the fall.
Apple worked around this, with engineers controlling robots
from home and using iPads with augmented-reality software to guide technicians
in overseas factories, Riccio said. Staff also worked different hours to
communicate better with staff already stationed in China. The “very best is yet
to come,” Riccio added. The company is focused on developing augmented-reality
and virtual-reality hardware products for debut in coming years, Bloomberg News
has reported.
Johny Srouji, head of custom chip development, told staff
about a cellular modem that went into development this year.
Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said Apple's design
team “discovered new ways of working” remotely, while operations executive
Sabih Khan praised his team's ability to produce products this year with
minimal delays.
Eddy Cue discussed Apple's services performance this year,
Lisa Jackson discussed Apple's climate pledge, Deirdre O'Brien talked up retail
efforts in the midst of COVID-19, while John Giannandrea discussed AI efforts,
including sharing that Apple moved up the release of its Apple Watch hand
washing feature to this year. © Bloomberg
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