Unit 3 - Individual Project Collapse Top PanelsAssignment OverviewType: Individual ProjectUnit: Strategy Formulation and PlanningDue Date: Tue,12/11/18Grading Type: NumericPoints Possible: 150Point

Amazon’s Human Resources Posture

Name: Brigetta N. Steward

Institution: American InterContinental University

Date: 11/26/2018

Amazon’s Human Resources Posture

Introduction

In the globally competitive environment, corporate entities are increasingly focusing on managing their human resources. The main aim is to enhance their performance and general wellbeing and improve the output of their organizations. Productive employees contribute significantly to the growth and profitability of the companies. Increased revenue enables firms to maintain a competitive edge in their market niches. Just like other companies, Amazon recognizes that employees are an important resource. Notably, the company has taken significant steps to enhance their welfare. In addition to benefits and compensation, it focuses on managing its talents, improving their skills, and honing their leadership capabilities. Also, it prioritizes its customers because of the influence that they have on its revenue. It is against this background that this study provides a comprehensive review of Amazon’s human resources posture in light of technology, benefits and compensation, diversity, corporate social responsibility, and organizational and employee development.

Benefits and Compensation

With reference to Amazon, benefits and compensation refer to salaries and other monetary and non-monetary gains that are extended to the employees by the management. It is an important aspect of human resources that influence employee motivation. Giving the workforce benefits based on their actions, competencies, and performance helps to bring out the best in them. Fundamentally, salaries and compensation packages attract people to work for the organization and improve the job profile and reputation of the company (Fassin, 2012).

Apart from fixed salaries, Amazon offers a variety of benefits to its employees. Its innovative career choice program prepays tuition fees for employees who wish to pursue higher education. This is regardless of whether the disciplines contribute to the improvement of their performance at the company or not. The company’s objective in this respect is to help employees to maintain their competitiveness in the current and future job environment. Undoubtedly, the package is beneficial because it allows employees to develop careers in demand spheres such as robotics, medicine, engineering, and law. Also, it gives its part-time employees who work for more than twenty hours in a week dental and visual insurance. However, the company has been biased with respect to addressing gender issues. It lacks an elaborate benefits package for its female employees. The subconscious biases during recruitment prevent women from gaining employment and enjoying human rights.

Its Network Support Program has been useful too. The guidance and counseling plan helps employees to deal with multiple issues pertaining to personal life and aspects of work. It is available at all times and professionals assist employees to address issues such as financial planning, coping with major life events, helping children with developmental problems, and so forth. Other benefits that the company offers include an in-house gym, tuition assistance, breakfast and juice bar sessions, and transport reimbursement. By giving the employees the abovementioned benefits, Amazon recognizes and appreciates their contributions to the wellbeing of the firm. Generally, the benefits have been useful for sustaining employee motivation and helping Amazon to retain its most talented staffs.

Business and Leadership Strategy

The online retailing sector has innumerable challenges that require effective leadership in order to sustain growth and development. Amazon uses different leadership and business approaches to overcome problems and enhance growth. To begin with, the firm emphasizes on customer satisfaction. In this regard, it ensures that the needs and interests of the clients are met. According to company reports, its customer value low prices, first delivery and a wide selection of products. The company addresses these desires to retain its clients. It has taken elaborate strategies to understand the entire needs of all its clients and customize products and services. It targets upper and middle-class clients who use basic technology in a bid to save time. It implements the reviews of customers and designs services and products based on the previous behavior. Its services are speedy and competitive.

Also, the company trains its staffs and managers to be sensitive to the needs of the clients. Further, it uses positive word of mouth advertising as part of its digital marketing strategy. This has had a significant impact on its sales and profitability. According to Nkomo, Fottler and McAfee (2010), its response to competition is impressive. In particular, its quick expansion of services makes it difficult for competitors to catch up. Coupled with its innovative culture, appeal to client satisfaction, and loyalty helps it to pioneer products that are worthwhile. Overall, Amazon’s business and leadership strategies are exceptional. Its management uses them to maintain a competitive advantage.

Diversity

The notion of diversity is a crucial aspect of the current workplace. It has various facets that include gender, ethnicity, race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or age. It comprises of individuals with different cultural references, physical abilities, experiences, personality types, and educational backgrounds. Usually, company workforces reflect the communities that they serve. Inclusion ensures that all staffs are respected, valued, empowered, heard and enjoy a true sense of belonging. Inclusion boosts the productivity and engagement of employees. It fosters creativity and innovation and helps organizations to prevent employee turnover that hurts its economic wellbeing (Aswathappa, 2013). To sustain growth, Amazon should understand that diversity is a key aspect of entrepreneurship. In the globalized society, embracing the principle will help it to adapt to the economic changes effectively. It will also enable it to attract and create a more qualified workforce from the global employee pool.

Statistical evidence indicates that Amazon employs approximately 88,400 individuals from across the globe (Aswathappa, 2013). However, most of them are White males. Specifically, the White males comprise a significant sixty percent of the total employee base. In addition, the White male workers occupy most of the managerial positions. The company blames the disparity on lack of important knowledge in engineering, technology, science, and mathematics. Although the management has pledged to provide resources to support educational programs, it faces the challenge of including persons from diverse groups in its top management.

Employee Relations

In his review, Okpara (2007) posits that healthy employee relationships contribute significantly to organizational success. They are essential for human satisfaction and high productivity. Employee relations entails preventing and solving issues concerning staffs that arise at the workplace, and which influence the workplace settings. Strong employee relations are a product of multiple factors. According to Bratton and Gold (2017), the factors include employee commitment, safe work environments, effective communication system and incentives that boost employee morale. Strong relationships amongst staffs lead to motivated, efficient, and productive teams. The employees demonstrate positive identity towards their duties and dedicate themselves to increasing sales.

Although Amazon is one of the popular and most successful online retail companies, it continues to face challenges that relate to employee relationships. Allegedly, some of its decisions and corporate and leadership weaken bonds in the workplace. Seemingly, the company encourages aggressive tendencies that prevent effective communication. Issues pertaining to feedback and decision making are not given due consideration. Industry reports show that the stringent and conditional work environment contributes to psychological distress (Aswathappa, 2013). Increased incidences of work-related stress are as a result of the company’s reluctance to initiate and implement informal conflict management techniques and management strategies that strengthen workplace relationships. Although it has initiated plans to help employees to manage stress, it should minimize or eradicate the stressors that impact on the health of employees. These include job insecurity, demanding responsibilities, unhealthy and stressful work conditions, unsafe work environments, long work hours and negative behaviors like harassment, discrimination, and bullying.

Notably, most of the employee’s complains at Amazon revolve around lack of inclusivity, low morale, lack of motivation, and low self-esteem. In addition to impacting negatively on the productivity of the employees, poor relations affect the reputation and efficiency of the organization. The human resources should resolve conflicts effectively without stifling honest critique. Okpara (2007) asserts that in order for critique to be helpful, it should be delivered in an empathetic and respectful way. Such an approach supports a culture of innovation and motivation and upholds loyalty.

Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Amazon acknowledges that to support its e-commerce activities, it needs to satisfy the needs and interests of all its stakeholders. The stakeholders include clients, the communities within which it is located, and employees. Nkomo et al (2010) defines stakeholders as groups or individuals that are linked to the organizations basing on their stake in the operations of the firm. Thus, the business activities and decisions affect stakeholders in different ways. Considering its global reach, Amazon’s stakeholders have varying interests and expectations. This compels the company to adopt broad and complex corporate social responsibility programs, policies, and strategies. Satisfying the interests of stakeholders helps the firm to maintain its position in the online retail company.

Amazon prioritizes the interests of its clients because of the pertinent roles that they play in its business and revenue generation. The prioritization is in line with its corporate vision and mission statements that emphasize the centrality of clients in the business. The main interests of its clients are the convenience of service, online security, and fair pricing. It emphasizes client needs through technology and quality service. The company values employees because they support its competitive advantage through its organizational culture. Its human resource department facilitates the development of new ideas in order to increase efficiency. Also, the firm satisfies the interests of its employees through its compensation policy and leadership development. Its cultural support and competitive compensation address the needs of its workforce. Finally, Amazon maintains a comprehensive corporate responsibility program for its communities. The local groups influence consumer perception on its services and goods. It addresses the interests of communities through environmental conservation initiatives, healthcare projects, and education.

Organizational and Employee Development

It cannot be disputed that the current work environment is ever-changing. It requires employees to exercise flexibility and adapt to the changes accordingly. Amazon recognizes that employees require sufficient and relevant skills to perform their duties effectively. Keeping up with industry trends, upholding the required standards and improving the quality of services, and encouraging an innovative culture help the organization to pioneer change in the industry. Amazon achieves this through continuous training and development. The sessions ensure that employees acquire the necessary skills to perform their duties efficiently. They understand their role and execute responsibilities confidently. Competent employees uphold workplace ethics and adhere to the established standards and regulations.

Through its Career Choice program, Amazon demonstrates its commitment to training and educating its employees. Training and development program boost the morale of employees and improves their satisfaction. The development programs ensure that staffs have broad knowledge and consistent experience (Fassin, 2012). Further, capacity building increases innovation by introducing new skills in the workforce. Most importantly, Amazon uses training and development to retain its staff and reduce the rates of turnover.

Talent Management

Talent management refers to the company’s commitment to hire, recruit, develop, and retain employees that exhibit high-level competencies. Usually, the employees are the best in the industry and as such, most of the companies use various strategies to acquire and retain them. The employees are superior in their fields of specification and perform their duties efficiently, accurately, and with utmost precision. Businesses use talent management to employ, attract, and retain skilled workers. Like employee recognition and engagement, talent management attracts top employees to the company. Companies that manage their talented employees provide them with numerous opportunities to develop their professional skills. In his research, Fassin (2012) established that professional development motivates employees to take up employment opportunities as well as stay at the jobs.

Amazon values elite and educated employees. It has an aggressive recruitment strategy that targets savvy professionals who have strong analytical skills. Currently, it sources its employees from prestigious schools. It pursues candidates by offering them job opportunities immediately they enroll for higher education. This is in a bid to secure their employment in the future. In addition to offering them employment opportunities, the company promises them increased job flexibility and internal growth opportunities. Also, Amazon acknowledges the importance of professional development. To this end, it provides opportunities through training and education programs. The sessions ensure that employees are well informed about their duties and have enough skills to execute responsibilities efficiently.

According to Bratton and Gold (2017), providing employees with learning opportunities helps them to achieve their long-term professional goals. In addition, it increases employee loyalty to the company as well as their levels of satisfaction. Amazon employs a strategy that presents clear opportunities and paths for upward professional mobility. The strategy strengthens workplace relations, evaluates employee needs, and culminates into a skilled, motivated, and a productive workforce that is committed to meeting its professional and organizational goals and objectives

Technology

Technology helps Amazon to focus on and address the needs of clients. Technological techniques that the company employs range from high-performance transaction systems, queuing and workflow systems, object caching and complex rendering to data analytics, and business objectives and neural networks. Most of its systems are based on the latest findings in computer science. The company’s scientists are committed to research and development. With the support of the company, they invent new technological techniques to resolve problems and enhance product delivery and quality of services. In addition to infusing technology in its processes, it uses them in decision making. In essence, the company integrates technology in every aspect of its business.

Apparently, technology has accorded Amazon a competitive advantage by enabling it to maintain a leading position in the industry. Applying new technologies such as the Amazon Echo Assistant eliminates inefficiencies that compromise the quality of products and services. Undeniably, new technologies have had a marked impact on its supply chain activities. In this respect, it uses drones to ship packages to distant markets. The use of robots has particularly been useful for the company’s business operations. In developed countries, it has launched technologies such as the dash that takes voice commands and scans barcodes. The technological advances help it to meet its fundamental goals and objectives.

Conclusion

Employees are an important asset that organizations use to improve productivity and sustain growth. Staffs that perform well have sufficient and relevant skills in their areas of expertise. Through its benefits and compensation programs, Amazon has succeeded in motivating top performing employees to achieve excellent performance. Its social and corporate responsibility initiatives address the needs and interests of its employees, clients, and communities. The company focusses on developing the competencies of the employees so as to improve the performance of the company. Through talent management strategies, it engages its employees, motivates them, improves their competencies, and reduces turnover. Also, it prioritizes the interests of its customers by incorporating their interests in decision making, customizing products and services, and eliminating inefficiencies. It uses an aggressive approach to source for and retain talented staffs. It capitalizes on technological advancements to enhance the efficiency and quality of its services. However, the study established that the company has not been committed to addressing diversity concerns. Its reluctance to handle the issues has had a negative effect on its reputation and employee relationships.

References

Aswathappa, K. (2013). Human Resource Management: Text and Cases. London: McGraw Hill.

Bratton, J. & Gold, J. (2017). Human Resources Management: Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave.

Fassin, Y. (2012). Stakeholder Management, Reciprocity and Stakeholder Responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 109, 83-96

Nkomo, S., Fottler, M. & McAfee, B. (2010). Human Resource Management Applications: Cases, Exercises, Incidents, and Skill Builders. New York: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Okpara, J. (2007). Human Resource Management Practices in a Transition Economy: Challenges and Prospects. Management Research News, 31 (1), 57-76.