Why people don't connect at work: physical barriers like wheelchair access, cognitive ones that exclude neurodivergent employees, and cultural ones that intimidate non-native English speakers. Apple learned in Hong Kong that benefits need local context. Teams across time zones need a digital sunset to stop working around the clock.
people back, or what I call the intelligence abstraction. Not necessarily adding more things, but really trying to understand why are people not connecting. And when you ask yourself that question, you realize that you have different types of barriers. It could be a physical barrier, like for example if someone is on a wheelchair accessing this stage today. It could be a cognitive one. If you think about the experiences from meetings to events, they're typically designed for neurotypical individuals. And so how do we remove the barriers so that people who are neurodivergent, for example, they can also be included and they can have a great experience? And the third type of barrier that is very relevant to this context is more cultural. For many of us, English is a second language, so we are very intimidated when we're speaking in public. And so how do we help to remove these barriers so that we can really enable that connection? So that's one of the main points that I wanted to make. In terms of bridging the cultural gap, I think here we talked about the different generations, but it's not only about different generations. It's about different cultures and how to make sure that things are relevant locally. For example, when we started working at Apple and Apple first came to Hong Kong, it was very Western-based, and so a lot of the policies didn't really make sense here. For example, many of the team members in retail, they were not living with partners, so what What they wanted, for example, was benefits for their parents because they live together. So understanding that cultural relevance to make it culturally relevant. And one of the final things, we talked about well-being, and in this part of the world we often end up with a bad stick when it comes to meetings. Very often when we work with Europe or especially with the US, for example, we are 24/7, especially if you're in regional teams. And so how do we How do we establish a digital sunset? How do we make sure that we respect the time off so that we can really reset? I think that when we're thinking about being connected, the first thing is really having that, that well-being. Thank you.
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