HR Strategy
The company has a program- Bar Raiser- among the tools for selecting the best candidates. It ensures that each new employee is better than half of the people previously hired for a similar position. A number of people who have conducted more than 25 interviews are selected among the full-time employees, which makes it possible to evaluate a new candidate (Milkman, 2022). They are not part of the recruitment team for the vacancy but present as independent observers at the interview. An offer will be made to the candidate only if the observer approves this decision.
Staffing
The basis of the selection system at Amazon is Amazon Leadership Principles, and these are the key values that employees should possess and be guided by in their work. The process consists of two steps — a telephone interview (Phone Screen) and a personal interview (Onsite loop) if successful (Eapen, 2022). The recruiter conducts communication to understand the employee’s overall adequacy, the correspondence of knowledge and experience to the position in question, and motivation. The company’s personnel policy’s primary focus is verifying the candidate’s compliance with the basic principles of Amazon’s organization policy (Solanki, 2019). Candidates undergo several stages of verification, where their capabilities for innovative solutions and actions are evaluated.
Training and Development
Training in the company begins with the fact that people help each other to immerse themselves in the Amazon culture from the first day of work. Experienced Amazon managers teach newcomers the skills and way of thinking necessary for successful work in the company (Zanoni & Miszczynski, 2022). For example, they learn how to keep the focus not on competitors and investors but primarily on the well-being of users. For further training of employees, the company has an internal encyclopedia, a storehouse of information about the company, and an internal website where people post their training videos on various topics. The company compensates participants of the additional training program up to 95% of the cost of obtaining a diploma on completion of courses or advanced training in various fields (Zanoni & Miszczynski, 2022). This applies to various fields, from IT and computer science to healthcare and transport.
Performance Management and Compensation
The central part of the Amazon staff consists of warehouse employees who work on the organization of movement and tracking of goods. The average wage in Amazon warehouses is $18 per hour, which is higher than the minimum wage of $15 per hour (Milkman, 2022). Performance Management is carried out by transferring tasks to the product scanner of each employee. The device counts the number of seconds between the execution of tasks, signaling that the company is lagging behind the standards — the notification may be about the issuance of a warning and even about the dismissal of an employee. In addition, the activities of managers and office staff are evaluated due to the success of the implementation of projects and their deadlines.
Labor Relations
As in many other American companies, the organization of work processes at Amazon is based on basic principles, the primary purpose of which is to help employees make the right decision based on the company’s values. All the products that the corporation is working on are developed with the aim of first making a product for the client and then increasing its sales. There are 14 principles that the company lives by, and they are used in all work processes (Zhu, 2021). These principles are especially fundamental and reflect the company’s desire to support innovative thinking and leadership qualities of employees. They are guided when launching a new product, during interviews, or when giving feedback to a colleague.
References
Eapen, S. (2022). Comparative study of HR management practices in information technology industry. International Journal of Early Childhood Special Education, 14(15), 1718–1727. Web.
Milkman, R. (2022). The Amazon labor union’s historic breakthrough. Dissent, 69(3), 96–101.
Solanki, K. (2019). ‘To what extent does Amazon.com, Inc success be accredited to its organizational culture and Jeff Bezos’s leadership style? Archives of Business Research, 7(11), 21–40.
Zanoni, P., & Miszczynski, M. (2022). Post-Diversity, precarious work for all: Unbordering categories of difference in an amazon warehouse. Academy of Management Proceedings, 1.
Zhu, Y. (2021). HRM solution of challenges in COVID-19 pandemic – a case study of Amazon. Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Public Relations and Social Sciences (ICPRSS 2021), 141–147.