IntroductionThe purpose of the HR core activities project is to analyze the student’s articulation of key HR activities (CLOs/ULOs). The project is due week 8; however, the assignment contents will be

Running head: AMAZON’S EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT

Amazon’s Employee Development

Roderick Hooks

HR491

Company background and mission

Amazon is a corporation that initially operated in the e-commerce industry. However, the firm is slowly expanding its operations in the retail industry. Originally, Amazon was a book company, but with time, the company had grown to become the largest online retailer. The organization offers various services and deals with millions of varying products. The mission of the corporation is to be "Earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online" (Majed, 2018).

The success story of Amazon began in 1995 by its founder Jeff Bezos and electrical engineering and computer science graduate from Princeton University. Bezos resigned as from an investment bank, moved to Seattle and later found the Amazon (Majed, 2018). Jeff Bezos had little knowledge about the Internet. However, "he came across a statistic that the Internet was growing at 2300%; this convinced him that this was a large growth opportunity".

Seattle's close proximity to Rosenberg (book wholesalers) and high technological talent made Bezos term it as the best location of the firm. Under the firm's mission, Jeff Bezos highlighted two main ideas. The first idea is being n e-commerce corporation that is customer-centric. The second is creating an environment where clients could find anything they intended to buy.

Strategy and objectives

The company has identified some key success factors in its business model. The first is securing a strong brand name (Majed, 2018), then providing customers with a superior online shopping knowledge and amazing value. The third success factor is making a tangible sales capacity. Lastly, realizing economies of scale and scope. The marketing strategy of the firm is developed to increase client's traffic to its website, encouraging repeat purchase, developing incremental service and product revenue opportunities and building customers loyalty. Customer-centric relates to asking the client's what they want, figuring out how these needs would be sorted and finally fulfilling the needs.

Amazon believes that innovation means looking for what clients do not know that they need and going ahead to deliver it to customers. The corporation pledges to deliver value conveniently and at the broadest price. The firm has rapidly grown its operations abroad and serves at least 152 countries globally. By the end of the year 2019, Amazon had 798,000 part-time and full-time employees.

Amazon has many employees as compared to its e-commerce competitors, for example, E-bay. The organization has an endless list of products, for example, foods, toys, furniture, books, jewellery, cloud infrastructure and more (Amazon, 2020). Amazon's revenue growth has proved to be steady and enables the company to meet its ever-increasing success. When the holiday season comes, the organization add new employees to meet the holiday demand.

Employees’ development

The knowledge economy and globalization have resulted in increased competition. The business environment has made the organizations focus more on organizational training. The aim of the firms is to promote a competitive advantage which helps the organization enjoy sustainable growth and also survive in developing and developed countries (Nassazi, 2013). It is evident that competitiveness is the main survival tool for firms venturing in the integrated and open global economy. The level of competitiveness of an company refers to its degree of superiority by which the organization produce services, goods and other related functions that make the organization better than its competitors.

The competitiveness of a firm is, therefore, its ability to perform better than competing organizations in terms of market share, sales, cost reduction, or profitability (Nassazi, 2013). The competitiveness of an organization is multi-faceted is affected by internal and external forces. The main internal source of competitive advantage is employees training and development.

Employees represent a major element of a firm. The failure or success of a company depends on employees' performance. Having realized the role played by employees in the success of the organization, firms are investing a lot of finances on employees development. Employee development is the most significant function of the personnel manager (Jehanzeb & Bashir, 2013). Worker’s development entails developing all the personal abilities of the employee and the company as a whole. There is a close link between employees development and employees performance which makes it a critical move for the success of a firm.

Employee development at Amazon

Having realized the benefits of employee development, Amazon has continually invested huge sums of money in employee training and development. Development, training as well as ideas for improvement are the building blocks for a good working environment. Amazon provides many skills development opportunities for the employees. The organization develop its employees through career choice programs, career skills and A2Tech.

Career Choice programs

The Career Choice program was launched in the year 2012. The program provides up to $12,000 for textbooks, fees and tuition. All hourly associates that have been employed by the corporation and served for at least one continuous year are free to join the program. Besides employees across the subsidiary organizations and workers in thirteen countries can join the program. At least 16, 000 individuals have participated in the program and out of them, 12,000 are in America (Amazon, 2020). Other countries include Italy, Ireland, Czech Republic, France, Canada, the U.K. and Germany. The company also intends to extend the program to Slovakia, South Africa and Costa Rica.

Amazon provides the education funds for areas that are of high demand. The popular fields of study include healthcare, information technology, machine tool technology, nursing, commercial truck driving, aircraft mechanics and healthcare. The corporation has at least 40 career choice classrooms in America and at least ten in Europe. The classrooms are situated in high-traffic areas behind glass walls. The location is strategic because it motivates fellow employees to join the program being inspired by their peers who are behind the glass walls pursuing new skills.

Career skills

Initially, Amazon concentrated on creating more new jobs. However, the firm shifted its focus to investing more in the training of the existing employees together with its associates on life and career skills, which are critically important for both employees and the company's survival. Career skills is an absolutely free development and on-site training program which is available for the company's hourly employees from the first day they start working (Amazon, 2020). The career skills program has classes on different skills, for example, time management, Microsoft excel, interviewing skills, resume building and more.

The corporation emphasizes that employee development is important for the employees and the organization as well, that is the logic behind offering an educational program for the growth of its multi-national workforce. The firm underlines that the shifting industry and world call for not only employees hiring but also employee development and training. Besides, the corporation takes the responsibility to train associates and upskill employees with living skills that can enable the employees to secure more rewarding roles.

The company provide employees with an opportunity to get skills that are important for survival in a dynamic environment. The employees get an opportunity to get technical skills that assist in problems assessment. According to the corporation, the skills are not only for the benefit of the organization and its associates but for the long-term competitiveness of the employees elsewhere as well. Besides the promotion of employees in the firm is tied to the acquisition of more skills and career development. Many of the managers in the corporation began with hourly roles. In the year 2017, the corporation promoted 1,250 to process assistant roles and U.S. tier, one associate.

The company has other employee training programs, for example, career skills training, re-training opportunities, software development training (for women), leadership orientation and apprenticeships. Additionally, the corporation has the POLD (Pathways Operations Leadership Development) program, which aims at developing high-potential graduates (Amazon, 2020). Besides, the company has a women relaunch program for ladies who had left their jobs to take care of their families. Other training programs include veteran apprenticeship, mentorships, military leader program, fellowships and pathway military training program for high-potential leaders.

A2Tech

The A2Tech program is an associate program that offers training opportunities for fulfilment associates interested in I.T. support. Amazon's associates are free to apply for the I.T. Technical roles in established fulfilment centres if they stand a selection chance. The associates also stand a chance to be hired for 90 days as temporary technicians (Amazon, 2020). The individuals get a chance to get hands-on experience for six hours and spend an additional two hours revising for the "CompTIA A+ Certification Exams". The "Amazon Ops Tech I.T." provides vouchers and eLearning materials for the 220-902 and A+ 220-901 exams. An associate individual who acquire the A+ certification within the 90 working days as a temporary technician gets absorbed as a permanent employee.

In addition to the existing training and development programs, the organization pledged to upskill 100,000 employees in America for jobs that are in demand by the year 2025. The upskilling will provide an opportunity for the Amazonians to shift to highly skilled non-technical and technical roles in the corporation's offices, fulfilment centres, transport network, tech labs and also pursue their career in other organization out of Amazon.

The corporation pledged to provide more career opportunities in areas that are rapidly growing, for example, robotics, cloud computing, machine learning, and computer science and manufacturing (Amazon, 2020). The continued efforts by the organization aimed at building a good rapport with the employees through the development and growth of their skills which in turn results to the success of the organization. The organization aims at developing its support to the workers through other means, for example, raising the minimum wage for American employees to $ 15 and up to 40 weeks of paid parental leave. The conditions provide opportunities for employees to further their career in other training centres and not only in Amazon.

Benefits of Amazon’s Employee development

From the evaluation of the corporation's employee development programs, it is evident that the corporation is dedicated to ensuring that the employees gain the necessary skills for current and future employability. Amazon has proved to be a successful e-commerce corporation and has got further to invest in the retail industry. The success of a firm is closely tied to its employees, and definitely, the rapid growth and competitiveness of the firm are associated with the workers. Employee development is significant for the workers, activities performed by the workers, and it is a clear indicator that the organization cares about its workers and is determined to grow them.

Employee development and accomplishment of the organization’s goals

The main role of the employees is to assist the firm in achieving its goals by undertaking different tasks. Amazon’s main objective is to build a strong brand name. A strong brand name is derived from customer satisfaction. Employees boost customer satisfaction by showing empathy to the needs of the customers, providing assistance to the customers and also striving to fully satisfy the needs of customers (Jha, 2016). By developing the career skills of the employees, Amazon has been able to meet and exceed the expectation of customers which has made it secure a strong brand position.

The corporation aims at increasing its service and revenue opportunities. By training its employees, the employees are more innovative and efficient, which has made the firm rapidly enlarge its online stores, venture in new industries and expand globally, which improves the corporation's revenue opportunities. Besides, the employees get more customer-centric, which boosts the organization's customer base.

Employee development and productivity

Employee development improves the productivity of a firm. Training provides employees with an opportunity to learn their jobs which makes them perform more competently. Therefore, training does not only improve the productivity of an individual employee but the productivity of the whole organization. Besides, training of employees provides an opportunity to communicate organizational goals to the employees (Jha, 2016). Moreover, training impacts on the employees working skills and behaviour, which results in enhanced performance. The main aim of any company is to maximize profits. Employee development improves workforce efficiency and effectiveness, which maximizes profits.

Amazon has benefited from training the Amazonians because the productivity of the employees is high, which has made the corporation an e-commerce giant. For instance, leadership training is important for both the junior employee and the top management workers. Leadership training improves collaboration between employees which makes the accomplishment of the task easy. Additionally, the firm has continually increased its profits which have enabled it to venture in new markets from being a books store to being a large e-commerce corporation. Moreover, the profits earned by the corporation has enabled it to continually invest in developed and developing countries in the world.

Employee development and competitive advantage

A firm is a cohesive organism that continually strives to find better ways of doing things as a response to the changing business environment. Employees are key assets that enable a firm to enjoy a sustainable competitive advantage (Kamya, 2011). The source of competitive advantage has migrated from financial to technological and now to financial resources. Employee competences, skills and attitudes have the ability to make the organization competitive.

Through employee development, Amazon has been in a better position to be innovative. Innovation is a source of competitive advantage because it makes the corporation produce services and products that are different from those of competitors. The critical component of an innovation strategy is broadening the skills of the employees. Thus, the position of Amazon as one of the most successful e-commerce corporation is linked to its employee development program. Quality enhancement is key to competitiveness and entails service and product enhancement. Moreover, employee development has enabled the corporation to dramatically reduce its costs by coming up with innovative means of getting things done.

Employee development and employee retention

One of the main characteristics that help an organization to retain its employees is providing learning opportunities. Employee retention is a key success factor, and it enables an organization to enjoy the expertise of an employee for a long time (Jha, 2016). By providing endless learning opportunities, Amazon has been in a position to retain at least 798, 000 part-time and full-time employees and attracts more workers globally. Employee retention reduces the hiring costs of the organization and enables the organization to retain its reputable employees.

In conclusion, employees are an important asset to a company. Employee performance leads to either success or failure of an organization. Therefore, Amazon and other firms are investing heavily in employee development. The paper has examined how Amazon develops its employees and how the development has made the organization expand its operations and more successful. From the study, it is evident that employee development enhances organizational development and makes the organization enjoy a competitive advantage.

References

Amazon. (2020). Training. From https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment/our-fulfillment-centers/training

Jehanzeb, K., & Bashir, N. A. (2013). Training and development program and its benefits to employee and organization: A conceptual study. European Journal of business and management, 5(2).

Jha, V. (2016). Training and development program and its benefits to employee and organization: A conceptual study. International Journal of Scientific Research in Science and Technology, 2(5).

Kamya, M. T., Ntayi, J. M., & Ahiauzu, A. (2011). Organisational learning and competitive advantage: testing for the interacting influence of knowledge management and innovation. International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 10(4).

Majed, S. Z., Nuraddin, S. H., & Hama, S. V. S. (2018). Analyzing amazon success strategies. Journal of process management. New Technologies, 6(4).

Nassazi, A. (2013). Effects of Training on Employee Performance. Evidence from Uganda.