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Amazon has long had a turnover problem. This is often attributed to the relationship that management has to its employees. Management at Amazon tends to be hard-driving, demanding very high performance standards of its workers. In part, this is because the company wants to compete better. If employees are more efficient, such as in its warehouses, then customers receive their goods faster. That in turn is good for business, but it is not good for employees, and high turnover is a natural result. The company's management practices have been described as "digital Taylorism," based on principles of scientific management where tasks are clearly defined and measured. This leads to jobs, ultimately, that are unsatisfactory (Stefanova, 2015). As a result, Amazon has the second-highest turnover of any Fortune 500 company (Mahapatra, 2013).In order to address, this problem, Kotter's eight steps can be applied. The eight steps are to create urgency, to form a powerful coalition, to develop a vision and strategy, to communicate the vision, to empower broad-based actions, to generate short-term wins, consolidate gains and finally to anchor new approaches into the culture (Mindtools, 2016). Creating urgency should be the easy part. While Amazon is the leader in its field, it does face intense competition from other online retailers, and offline retailers. Ultimately, as the job market improves, it will have a more difficult time finding workers who are willing to work under stressful, difficult conditions for low wages. The problem with turnover is at the low-end jobs, not the high-end.. While Amazon does have programs for workers who can stick it out, such as stock options, it loses a lot of people getting to that point, and eventually it will find itself getting even lower marginal returns on new hires as the potential talent pool diminishes (O'Donovan, 2015).
This reality alone should be enough to create urgency within the organization. Amazon's leadership needs to recognize that a crisis will occur if it does not act, and therefore it must create the sense of crisis...
This leads to the second element of Kotter's plan, which is creating buy-in. The corporate culture at Amazon comes from the top down. It is leadership, right up to CEO Jeff Bezos, that defines the culture. The reality is that without buy-in at the highest level, no plan will succeed, and that is especially true of Amazon. So much of Amazon is Bezos' vision, and what this means is that the change will need to be his vision as well. Without his support for new systems designed to reduce turnover while maintaining high performance levels, the company will not be able to implement change. The head of human resources has to therefore make a personal appeal to the CEO to champion the plan. If the CEO buys in, then as per Amazon's culture the rest of the company will fall into line. Changing the CEO's mind might require a coalition that includes a number of other senior executives, not just HR but operations and finance as well, who represent other major stakeholders. Finance is actually quite important because the change has to be framed as being in the best interests of the shareholders in order to truly get the attention of the CEO and the Board.
The third of Kotter's steps is to create the vision and strategy. The vision has to have two elements. First is that it has to fit within the current vision that Amazon has. This strategy is not designed to reinvent the company, just improve it. This means that the vision for the change has to align with the overall vision for the company, which is that Amazon wants to be the world's most customer-centric company. The vision for the change, therefore, has to tie lower turnover to higher service levels, in much the same way that companies like Costco or Fedex already do. If Amazon sees that building people up to be great workers over the long run is more sustainable and can deliver continuous improvements, then the strategy will align with the vision. This places strategic emphasis on recruiting -- finding better people initially -- as one of the key elements in…
Amazon TransportationIntroductionTransportation is a critical component of Amazon�s business model and, as such, turnover in this area can have significant impacts on the company�s bottom line. In order to address this issue, Amazon needs to recognize that its employees are key to the success of its transportation operation and, as such, it should strive to motivate them by various means (both extrinsic and intrinsic, such as competitive wages and benefits,
66). Furthermore, social software will only increase in importance in helping organizations maintain and manage their domains of knowledge and information. When networks are enabled and flourish, their value to all users and to the organization increases as well. That increase in value is typically nonlinear, where some additions yield more than proportionate values to the organization (McCluskey and Korobow, 2009). Some of the key characteristics of social software applications
Senior Management Questions about IT The most effective way to address senior management concerns is to develop a comprehensive IT plan rather than answering each question separately. The questions and therefore the answers are so closely related that they cannot be considered in isolation from one another. Our plan must include steps to change the perception of the IT organization. Today IT is a reactive, not well-understood cost center. To
Social Responsibility Strategy Veolia Transportation Company ensures the improvement of livelihood of people living in various cities, in America. The company offers high quality and environmentally friendly transportation services to the people. The company operates in cities, airports, universities and companies. Clients sought for Veolia services in operating their transport systems. Throughout the years, Veolia has been a leading transportation company in North America. Its contribution to the transport system has
Ch.8 - What approach should be used for the new employee orientation program at Sematech? Employee orientation programs are a very important part of commencing work at a new organization that focuses on providing employees with a genuine sense of what it is like to work in the organization. The most effective approach for a new employee orientation at Sematech should be based in efforts to bring new employees up to
Market Orientation of Medical Diagnostic Units Dissertation for Master of Health Administration i. Introduction ii. Objectives iii. Description iv Administrative Internship v. Scope and Approach vi. Growth vii. Methodology viii. Hypothesis ix. Survey Questionnaire x. Research Design xi. Observation and Data Presentation xii. Test provided xiii. Analysis of findings Marketability of Patient Satisfaction Importance of Employee Satisfaction xiv. Conclusions and Recommendations xv. Bibliography xvi. Notes xvii. Appendices Market Orientation of Medical Diagnostic Units