Apple shareholders vote to keep its diversity policies

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe interviewed Rob Kniaz, founding partner of Hoxton Ventures.

Transcript

00:00Apple's decision to keep DEI policies is in contrast to many major companies which have

00:06cut back similar initiatives after Trump branded them dangerous and demeaning.

00:12This month alone, Google sent an email saying the company will no longer have hiring targets

00:19to improve diversity in the workforce.

00:23Amazon's annual report has cut out a section it used to have on the company's focus on

00:28inclusion and diversity in hiring.

00:32Goldman Sachs dropped a requirement that a company it takes public must have at least

00:37two diverse members on its board of directors, one of whom has to be a woman.

00:42Pepsi will no longer use representation goals in hiring and will shift its supply diversity

00:48program to focus on all small businesses.

00:52And Citigroup is changing its diversity, equity, inclusion and talent management team into

00:58a talent management and engagement team amid reports it's ending diversity hiring goals.

01:07Rob Nyers is a founding partner at tech venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures and he joins

01:12us now.

01:13Hello, Rob.

01:14Great to chat to you.

01:15So, good idea by Apple to stand by its DEI.

01:19Does DEI help productivity and the bottom line?

01:25I think Apple is a very unique company and I think they bring true to their roots.

01:29I mean, it's always been sort of a hippie culture kind of company, so I'm not surprised

01:33if any company out there, they're the one that's going to stick to what they believe

01:37is true, just like Ben and Jerry did back in the day before they sold out.

01:41I think in terms of benefit, you have to look at who your customers are and, you know, does

01:45your employee base match what your customers look like?

01:47So, for a company like Apple, they are selling around the world to lots of different kinds

01:51of people.

01:52So, there probably is some value in having people that can speak different languages

01:55or recognize different accents or diacritics on letters, things like that.

02:00I think it's a very Apple type move to fight back hard on this.

02:04You know, other companies, you know, I think there's probably less of a clear logical value.

02:10I think, again, there's still not a lot of empirical evidence one way or another.

02:13So, it's for each company, I think, to figure out on their own what's right for them or

02:16what's right for their employees and what delivers best customer experience.

02:21At the same time, Tim Cook has voiced his concern that this decision to stick by the

02:26DEI policy at Apple could be challenged legally.

02:30Can you imagine how that might happen and on what grounds, bearing in mind a lot of

02:34these policies were born out of the civil rights movement in the 1960s?

02:39Yeah, I think the change is that, you know, once you start setting goals, goals become

02:44rules and then things become hard-coded that we have to hire X no matter what and people

02:49start, you know, letting the tail wag the dog.

02:51So, you know, in the U.S., you know, fundamentally, I think American culture doesn't like this

02:55sort of sense of unfairness.

02:57One thing is, you know, given the one group of people of entitlement, you know, there's

03:02always been a natural kind of American individualism but also that mentality of, you know, no special

03:07privileges for anyone.

03:08You know, we don't have a king.

03:09So I think that, you know, in general, this is a pendulum swing back towards the center

03:14that for companies, some of them went a bit overboard with, you know, making this very

03:18prescriptive what they had to hire, you know, two female board members or whatever it might

03:22be.

03:23I think, you know, there's a bit more of a common sense swing backward.

03:25Maybe it swings too far in that direction and people start, you know, going the opposite

03:29direction.

03:30But to me, this is a very kind of natural correction that people are realizing took

03:34a while but it's not what the public really likes.

03:37Do you think that the tech industry is sufficiently transformed in terms of including previously

03:44marginalized groups to let these policies go though?

03:48I think it's hard because when you look at the tech industry at the core of it, it's,

03:51you know, engineers and scientists and the people you speak about are also underrepresented

03:56at the core of maths and sciences.

03:58So you have that fundamental issue that the upstream supply doesn't really match the market

04:02itself.

04:03In Silicon Valley, if you look at the executives and the tech folks, you know, a lot of them

04:07don't necessarily look like the rest of the world but, you know, can you solve the problem

04:10by fixing it at the very end of the pipeline?

04:12No, I think you have to start at the beginning, which is the STEM programs, the maths and

04:16science and getting people into the industry organically, it just takes a lot of time to

04:20do that.

04:21All right.

04:22Thank you so much for sharing your views today.

04:23Much appreciated.

04:24Rob Nye is founding partner at tech venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures.

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