The Secret to Apple's Success: Strategic Planning for the Apple Workforce

A Newsletter from Aura Workforce Analytics: Apple Employees and Workforce Analysis

Despite stellar growth, Apple has maintained an extremely lean "startup-style" workforce compared with peers (Microsoft, Google, IBM).
Apple’s growing engineering team has enabled its product-centric business model, while other functions, like operations and sales, have been slimmed down.
Apple has maintained positive workforce attributes through its many product iterations and shifts, such as from computing to devices and from devices to services.
Companies should regularly track organizational structure metrics to map their path to success. Apple is an exemplary benchmark in Big Tech.

Apple's Workforce

Over the last decade, Apple has transformed from a hardware product-focused company to a more diversified offering across products, services, and research. This shift has been accompanied by significant turnover growth, almost tripling revenue from around $150B in 2012 to around $400B in 2022, TTM revenue of $391B as of November 2024.

Organizational structure planning is crucial for businesses to succeed, especially during periods of significant growth. It ensures optimized workforce resource allocation and capabilities aligned with the company’s strategic priorities. This structure also needs to support clarity of accountabilities and facilitate efficient decision-making processes. There are many domains of organizational structure to assess, including workforce size and allocation (e.g. to functions/geographies).

apple workforce size

Apple has maintained a highly efficient workforce size in relation to company turnover. With ~0.4 FTEs per million dollars of revenue at the end of 2022, this is favorable compared with peers, with only Google having a similarly lean workforce. IBM, on the other hand, has had slow revenues over this decade without significantly slimming the workforce.

However, a significant proportion of the Apple workforce is based in lower-cost regions (to be explored in a later section). This is likely partly due to their more service-centric business model, which would require more client-facing FTEs.

Apple's Organizational Structure

apple competitors A lean organizational structure can enable agile decision-making, adaptability to market changes, and profitability through cost control. As companies undergo growth or other major shifts, organizational structure and resource allocation must be aligned with the organization's goals to manage human capital as effectively as possible.

The geographical distribution of Apple’s workforce has remained relatively similar over the past decade, with the significant majority of employees based in North America or EMEA (~85%). This is in line with Microsoft and Google (~75% and ~80%, respectively); however, IBM has its employees spread across APAC, North America, and EMEA.

There are typically strategic trade-offs between these two approaches that may affect a company's internal performance and business outcomes. While a highly centralized workforce may benefit from efficiencies from reduced operational complexity, this may forgo potential benefits from accessing global talent pools, maintaining a more diverse workforce, and understanding local market needs & specificities.

Apple's employee distribution between higher-cost and lower-cost hubs may also translate into significantly different personnel costs—average North American and EMEA salaries are typically higher than average APAC and LATAM salaries.

The most significant change to the functional split of Apple’s workforce is a marked increase in Engineering FTEs (from 22% to 34%), associated with a decrease in the Sales team (from 16% to 9%). Given the maturity of product adoption, this mirrors Apple’s increasing product portfolio complexity and streamlined sales approach.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google each have similar employee distributions between functional teams, with Apple maintaining a particularly lean organization in FTEs per unit revenue across key functions.

By contrast, compared with its peers, IBM has very high figures for FTEs per unit revenue, especially in engineering, operations, and IT. Non-core & support functions typically target lean organizations to save costs. Still, for some functions, especially Demand functions, it is important to maintain consistent spending with peers to maintain market share or competitive advantage.

Apple’s Broader Workforce and Community Impact

Apple’s workforce strategy extends beyond simply meeting business needs; it also focuses on fostering an inclusive and diverse workforce. Apple has launched several initiatives to support underrepresented communities globally, including the Racial Equity and Justice Initiative and programs aimed at recruiting black candidates and women in technical roles. Apple actively invests in equity and justice initiatives to create a welcoming environment for all employees.

In recent years, Apple has made strides in promoting diversity and inclusion across its retail and corporate environments, creating pathways for underrepresented groups to pursue leadership roles within the company. The executive team at Apple is committed to driving meaningful change by supporting communities worldwide and enhancing creativity and innovation across the organization. Apple’s stores and Apple Park serve as hubs where employees and the public alike can experience Apple’s commitment to community and innovation.

Through this approach, Apple continues to advance its reputation in technology and as a champion of social responsibility. By prioritizing diversity, equity, and the development of a more inclusive workforce, Apple is setting an example that aligns with its brand of excellence and innovation in the smartphone industry, personal computers, tablet computers, and beyond.

Apple's Success

Overall, we see that Apple has remained a leader in organizational structure planning, creating a workforce that is optimized for efficiency and reasonably centralized, albeit in higher-cost regions. By aligning the workforce to strategic priorities like product focus, Apple has enabled its ongoing successes over this past decade and established strong foundations to continue this growth and outpace its competitors.

Even with dramatic product expansions, Apple's workforce strategy has remained steadfast. Apple's recent expansion into services like Apple Music has been a key part of its strategy to diversify revenue streams and enhance its brand offerings. Also, the release of the Apple Watch on April 24, 2015, marked a pivotal moment in Apple's history, showcasing its entry into the wearables market and ongoing innovation.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, measuring and understanding organizational structure is essential to harnessing the workforce's true potential. At AURA, we support this effort by making workforce data and analytics readily available, enabling the comparison of relevant metrics against industry peer benchmarks and exemplars to drive meaningful change.

Matthew Chan
Product Economist, Aura