Apple has launched a new webpage within its main site called “Ethics and Compliance” dedicated to explaining the policies that are created and applied in the company to ensure that all operations respect the law. Here’s one more transparency move by Apple on a sensitive and highly relevant issue for both employees and customers.
Apple explains the different policies on which they base their conduct. A quote of Tim Cook welcomes us: “We do the right thing, even when it’s not easy.” The website is divided into five sections: the home page, with a summary of the content and an introduction; the training section, which explains the process that the company follows to get these policies to all its employees; the policies section, where we can download all of them in PDF; the section for third parties, which collects, also in PDF, several guidelines for partners of the company; and finally, the “speak up” section that links to the website where you can ask questions or report violations.
Conduct policies of the company are explained
As stated on the same site, Apple focuses on different codes. Apple’s Business Conduct and Global Compliance team focuses on Business Conduct, Political Compliance, Export and Sanctions Compliance, Health Compliance, Antitrust Compliance, and Anti-Corruption Compliance.
To this end, all employees are required to undergo mandatory annual business conduct training. It is a training that covers knowing the codes as well as additional resources such as the helpline or the website itself.
In addition, Apple conducts internal and independent third-party evaluations of the programs to ensure their effectiveness. These evaluations can lead to changes in the policies and training themselves to reflect new trends and are reported to the Audit and Finance Committee of the Board of Directors by the Chief Compliance Officer himself.
Most policies in Ethics and Compliance webpage reflect the company’s four basic principles:
- Honesty: Demonstrate honesty and high ethical standards in all business dealings.
- Respect: Treat customers, partners, suppliers, employees, and others with respect and courtesy.
- Confidentiality: Protect Apple’s confidential information and that of our customers, partners, suppliers, and employees.
- Compliance: Ensure that business decisions comply with applicable laws and regulations.
Clearly, running a company as huge as Apple, with so many employees in so many parts of the world, and keeping it running smoothly is a hard task. These policies are important tools for good performance. We describe it as an interesting transparency exercise that also answers so many questions about the company.
