HR Policies and Practices

Overview
• Amazon is an America- based
multinational e-commerce and cloud
computing company.
• Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994.
• Headquarters : Seattle, Washington,
U.S.
• Revenue : $117.86 billion
• Subsidiaries : audible.com, whole
foods, zappos.com, souq.com,
woot etc.
 Employee Statistics
• Total Number of employees : 566,000
• Amazon is the second largest private employer
in the United States.
• Below chart shows the employee growth over
the past years.
 Employee Diversity
Gender Diversity Ethnic Diversity
Femal White Black Hispanic
es
37% Asian Other
13% 4%
Males 9%
63%
14% 60%

Amazon performs better than other tech

companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google in
gender and ethnic diversity (based upon data by US
census bureau)
Recruitment and Selection Practices

Recruiting at Amazon can be summed up in this famous

quote by Jeff Bezos. According to Bezos setting the bar
high in their approach to hiring has been, and will
continue to be, the single most important element
their success.
• More than three-quarters of Amazon’s employees
are actually warehouse workers who go through a
different interview process to the remaining 25%.
Candidates for non-warehouse roles go through
five interviews that last on average two to three
hours each.
• Amazon has set its standards sky-high when it
comes to recruitment – the interview process is far
from a walk in the park, mainly due to their hiring
philosophy.
• Amazon might be all about speed when it comes
to shipping, but it is more-than-willing to spend
hours of its workers time when it comes to
screening candidates.
• “I was placed in Amazon India as a software
developer through my college campus
placement at Jaypee Institute of Technology.
The selection process was a very rigorous one.
We had three rounds, first was a written round,
second was technical interview round and
finally an HR interview round. The interviews
were long and consisted current amazon
employees in the panel that I later came to
know were not in the HR department” –
Naman Jain, Amazon India Employee
• Amazon has a “bar raiser” program, where a select
group of Amazon employees take a second, unpaid
job as candidate evaluators.
• Bar raisers are employees throughout the company
who volunteer to be part of interview committees.
• These bar raisers will interview candidates for hours
– adding up to 20 hours a week to their workweek,
on top of their existing jobs.
• Five to six bar raisers are assigned to each candidate,
yet they interview them on their own, either via
phone or in-person. Then, the bar raisers write out
an evaluation of the candidate, and get together with
the other bar raisers who interviewed that person
and decide if the candidate will be a good fit
• If any bar raiser has any objection to the
candidate – even if the candidate is applying
for a position that is not in the same
department as the bar raiser – they are
eliminated. And high standards are
encouraged, as, after all, the idea of a bar
raiser is to raise the bar.
• “Every time we hire someone, he or she
should raise the bar for the next hire, so that
the overall talent pool is always improving,”
-- Jeff Bezos
 Anti - Hiring Pitch
• Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos takes a totally
different approach to Amazon hiring: he gives
prospects a hiring anti-pitch.
• Rather than tell prospects how happy and amazing
Amazon is, Jeff Bezos would tell them that “it’s not
easy to work here.”
• Even in 1997, during the dot-com boom, Bezos’s anti-
pitch was stark and to the point: “You can work long,
hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t
choose two out of three.”
• This practice had a powerful effect — those
who chose Amazon in spite of the anti-pitch
knew what they were getting into, and had in
fact self-selected for the challenge. Amazon
became known as a company whose
engineers were intense and elite.
• The anti-pitch tactic is also an expression of a
company’s commitment to transparency and
practice of appreciating context rather than
jumping to simplistic conclusions.
 How to Hire like Jeff Bezos
• Bezos swears by three critical questions before hiring
a single candidate
Will you admire this person?

• Most of the time, candidates admire the people working at

their desired company, however Bezos wanted hiring
managers to admire the candidate

Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of

the group they’re entering?

• Elevation is the next goal for new hires

Along what dimensions might this person be a superstar?

• He seeks someone who will help cultivate a fun and

interesting work environment
 Internships
• Amazon hire undergraduate, graduate and PhD
interns across the company, and give them
ownership over big projects starting on day one.
• Interns at Amazon play an important role on their
teams, and have the opportunity to work on high-
impact projects and businesses that are critical to
our customers.
• Amazon interns also receive relocation benefits
including transportation, subsidized furnished
houses, biweekly housekeeping and free breakfast
and dinner (source: Quora)
 Training and Development
Career Choice Program
• Amazon’s program, called Career Choice, is well known
for being ambitious, and one that prepares low-level
workers for higher-paying careers.
• After associates have been employed by Amazon for as
little as one continuous year, the Amazon Career
Choice Program will pre-pay 95% of tuition and fees for
them to earn certificates and associate degrees in high-
demand occupations.
• Amazon exclusively fund education only in areas that
are in high demand according to sources like the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they fund those areas
regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a
career at Amazon. Amazon's first Career Choice
graduate is now a nurse in her local community.
 Pivot Program
• Pivot" program that's designed to retain underperforming
employees with additional coaching and training.
• Pivot is a part of Amazon's dedication to improving the
work environment and opportunities at the company in an
effort to retain talent and become a more positive place to
work.
• If an employee was put into Amazon's performance
improvement program or PIP, it used to mean termination
was likely.
• With the pivot program, employees can take advantage of
coaching with a 'Career Ambassador' who can help bring
their performance up to par. Employees also have the
choice to quit with severance pay, or ask for an appeal
regarding their placement in the PIP.
 Pay to Quit Policy
• Amazon offer its fulfillment-center employees a
$2,000 bonus if they decide to quit. It increases
$1,000 each year until it caps at $5,000.
• “We're upfront with employees that we hope they
don't take the offer, but we want to give them a
chance to think about what they really want. If they
want to pursue a different career, we want to
support that.” – Amazon Website
• This policy motivates unhappy employees to leave
and help make the decision to quit easier for
employees who may stay for purely financial reasons
 Work Environment

• Amazon’s Seattle Headquarters

• There are little surprises scattered throughout the
architecture of the office buildings, everything from
nooks to entire floors where Amazonians can leave
their desks behind. These are spots to re-focus,
unwind, collaborate, meet friends for lunch, or get
the benefit of a fresh vantage point.

Varzea's fifth floor cafe provides an abundance of seating to spread out on

while taking in views of South Lake Union.
 Day 1's 16th floor open area promotes
Phone-booth-style pods are scattered fun as well as a workspace, featuring table
across campus, offering Amazonians a football, an oversized chessboard, bean
private place for a quick phone call or bag toss, and sweeping views of Seattle.
moment of focus.

Amazon's "Harry Potter room" in Doppler pays homage to J.K. Rowling's international
best-selling series by way of a miniature library, sliding ladder, and text from the first
page of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on the wall.
• On any given day at the Seattle headquarters,
employees share workspace with as many as 6,000
dogs. At Amazon, bring-your-dog-to-work day is
every day—a long-standing tradition that both
Amazonians and their four-legged friends enjoy.

Having pets in the workplace has been found to lower stress and boost
morale. The dog-friendly policy also contributes to the company’s
culture of collaboration.
• The Spheres are filled with more than 40,000 individual plants
from almost every continent, each with an interesting story to
tell.
• They all provide something that is missing from a typical office
space, a direct link to nature. Treehouse meeting rooms, river
and waterfall features, palladiums, a four-story living wall, and
epiphytic trees are just some of the unique features within
this one-of-a-kind space.
 Benefits Program
• The company's motto is "work hard, have fun, make
history”
• “At Amazon India we are made to work hard, but we
party harder. Our managers take out for parties over
the weekends. Once a month we spend our time in
luxurious resorts and all of this refreshes us and
motivates us to work harder” – Naman Jain, Amazon
India Employee
• The company also occasionally organizes celebrity
meet and greet, free concerts at their Seattle office.
 Implications
• Amazon has taken the time to find the right
combinations of policies and practices that allow
them not only to obtain top talent but to retain top
talent.
• Amazon was named the #1 business on LinkedIn’s
2018 Top Companies list, which ranks the most
sought after places to work for professionals in the
United States.
• Amazon scored perfectly on the Corporate Equality
Index, making Amazon one of the best places to work
for LGBTQ equality.