HR felt it was important to talk about these issues and to acknowledge the realities of the Apple of today versus the Apple of yesterday. The Business Partners are assigned to each major Apple business unit and serve as a business partner and consultant to the top executives in that business. Business Partners develop HR strategies to support the business units competitive strategy and coach managers on how to apply people management tools and processes. They also get involved in issue resolution. Business Partners have a strong dotted-line to their respective business head.
Individual employees are accountable for achieving their goals.
Further, rapid growth had promoted a lot of managers who were relatively unseasoned. Since the overwhelming majority of Apple s workforce is professional knowledge workers, a benchmark target ratio of 1 to 65 was established as a key indicator of HR s effectiveness going forward. A task force was then created. Over a six-month period, the group gathered customer data and conducted benchmarking and literature searches to develop a straw model. This model was presented to the senior team, which modified the proposal.