Essay on Developing People and Organisations at Amazon.com

This essay delves into the crucial role of organizational development and change management in the success of companies, using Amazon.com, Inc. as a case study. It explores the significance of training, positive working environments, and effective management in enhancing organizational performance. The essay highlights the benefits of organizational development, such as improved employee morale, increased productivity, and enhanced career opportunities, while also acknowledging potential limitations like behavioral complexities and resistance to change. It further examines Amazon's evolution in HR practices, from strict methodologies to incorporating organizational development techniques to improve employee retention and satisfaction. The essay discusses change management processes, Amazon's approach to human resource development, and the implementation of programs like Pivot to support employees. It also addresses challenges faced by organizations in unstable economic environments, including monetary constraints, unemployment, and the shift towards part-time employment. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of adapting HR strategies to foster both performance and employee satisfaction, particularly in the face of economic challenges.

Running head: ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
Essay on Developing People and Organisations at Amazon
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1ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
Introduction
Organisational development and Change management plays a vital role in an
organisation’s success story. To compete in the market an organisation should have a reliable
and innovative human resource. Organisational development was coined by Kurt Lewin, on
the basis of dynamics and research action. It is a way by which the efficiency and the
effectiveness of an organisation is increased. OD is a universally accepted methodology for a
positive change in the organisation.
The company taken for analysis and research is Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc.
is a multinational company. It is into e-commerce, cloud computing and artificial intelligence
business. Its head quarter is in Seattle, Washington. Jeff Bezos formed the company in 1994
and launching it online in 1995 as an online bookstore. It is one of the largest online retailing
company in the world, it sells everything from books to electronics all over the world
(Amazon, 1996-2010). It is one among the Big- four in the field of technology along with
Google, Facebook, Apple (Pratap 2019).
Organisational Development and its Importance.
Training for Change: An organisation is always changing and proper training is required for
the employees to adjust with the change. A proper training develops a healthy working
environment which in return makes the organisation profitable.

2ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
Making the Organisational Culture sensible: Organisational development gives direction
to the organisation and makes it more responsive towards the employees. A responsive
working management in a company gets more positive outcome in comparison to an inactive
management. OD helps the organisation to find an effective solution to improve the
organisational performance (Kuruvilla & Ranganathan 2008).
Major benefits of Organisational development:
 It not only provides opportunities for employees to work in a positive environment
but also improves the production.
 It helps everyone to achieve the highest potential in their career.
 Increasing the effectiveness of the organisation and making it an exciting work place.
 Enhance the inner quality of all human being and making them more productive.
Limitations:
 Human behaviour is subject to many limitations. Organisational development is
totally based on behavioural science.
 There is a majority of people who are not easy to be motivated. They hardly try to
make any effort and thus they are not helpful in applying the organisational
behaviour.
 There can be problem in adapting to the changes. If everyone is not ready to adapt the
change then some few crowd can’t bring a major effect to the organisation.
The implementation of the OD time to time helps in establishing the trust, improve
problem solving ability and establishing friendly and efficient corporate environment.
Amazon followed a very strict working methodology with less pay and low perks. This
affected the production and retention of the employees to a great extent. To minimise the
affect Amazon started to follow the Organisational development techniques to increase the

3ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
human resource output and retention. This helped it to come out of a bad phase where it was
considered to be a very strict employer to a healthy working organisation.
Change Management
This concept dates back to mid-1900s. It was in 1990 when the need for
organisational development and Change management was cited very important. Today it is an
important part of any organisation to function smoothly. The consumer expectation and
satisfaction is being kept in the heart of the organisation and that is what leading to the
change management application across the industries. It not only helps to make changes in
the organisation but also in the personal life of the employees. It consists of several steps to
move towards the desired change. It is a type of plan to be developed according to the project
to be delivered in time.
Steps of Change Management Process-
 To identify what needs to be improved: First it is required to understand what need
to be improved. This also identifies the resources or individual required to facilitate
the change.

4ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
 A plan to implement: This can be the roadmap which tells how to start, what route
to take and when the destination shall reach. This includes measurable target,
analysis, incentives and skill development.
 Providing resources and data for evaluation: Sometime tools like re-education,
rethinking and practices are considered. The clear vision on how to reach the
destination helps in better communication, timely distribution of the incentives and
also meeting the milestone.
 Manage dependencies, resistance and budgeting risk: A project can go through
resistance, dependency and also budgeting risk. Any change can have a fair amount of
risk associated with its implementation. Here the leaders are armed with tools to
manage any of these obstacles for smooth change management cycle.
 Improvement a continuous process: Change is an ongoing process. With time the
change management strategies need to be updated and adjusted. To remove the
roadblocks in the way of success it needs to be upgraded according to the project
requirement.
Change management is important as it helps the organisation to plan beforehand this also
needs to understand the risk and estimating the resources to do a successful change in the
process. Following these methods can definitely make the organisation a success and
competitive in the industry. A successful change in the organisation helps to motivate not
only its employees but also whole of the team.
Amazon’s approach in human resource development and skill development
Amazon is the second largest employer in US after Walmart. The company has used
continuous innovation and growth strategies with the help of technology and continuous
expansion. The company has many units like Amazon Publishing, Amazon prime, Amazon

5ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
Studios, Kindle, Fire TV. Amazon is the one of the largest provider of cloud infrastructure
services. More than 100 million people is subscribed to Amazon prime.
Factors that make Amazon a start performer:
 Till date 12 million shoppers all over the world.
 Leaders in technology utilisation to enhance customer satisfaction.
 Vast range of products to deliver at a competitive cost.
 Providing prompt customer care and valued added services.
 It has one the best logistic services model.
Amazon and its HR management system
Amazon is known for being strict in its working standards. If the company wants to
keep the customers in their heart then definitely the employees has to work harder to keep the
company in the heart of the customer. Rank and Yank was a famous HR policy followed by
Amazon for a long period of time. A good example of this is in 2001 reported a fiscal loss
and in no time it laid off 1000 workers. It was strongly criticized all over the world (Nelson
2019). Being an unethical practise the employer dropped method and moved towards OD
and change management techniques (Smither et al 2016).
Amazon believes that the employees of the company should be satisfied and have
pride in what they do. The leadership quality is taught at amazon which is followed by its
employees at all level. Amazons leadership principles are ownership, customer obsession,
hire and develop, think big & deliver result. With these principles Amazon is able to hire a
dynamic work force. Still Amazon faces a lot of problem due to poor HR management. The
major problem is to keep the employees happy and satisfied. Many a times the problem is
with the management and its rules. Such cultural norms inside the organization is a major
source of dissatisfaction for employees who feel demoralised and unsatisfied (HBS 2019).

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Over the period of time the company has made several changes and now it is
investing in performance improvement techniques which shall help the employees to boast
up. Rather
than hiring
anyone
from the
crowd now
amazon has
revised its policy and it has focused on quality hiring.
Pivot Program
Amazon started a new training program called Pivot. It is a retaining program
which aims at helping employees with a life-line before they decide to quit. The program
focuses on career counselling where they are assisted by HR to manage their career and
understand the skill gap better. As this step helps the employees to maintain normal working
condition in the organisation.
Amazon is also working on cloud based services to improve the HR management
capabilities. This is a good step taken by the company as it recognises the reward takers and
the low performer of the company. Where not only employees but also the organisation is
benefitting. It is saying that if they want to pressurise the employees than they should also

7ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
take care of them. Setting tough performance measures is good for company but not good for
employees and this affects the satisfaction level of the employees.
Some of the benefits provided by Amazon to its regular employees are:
 Health benefits like medical plan option for the employees and also for their family
members or dependent. Plan include full body, dental, vision medical plan.
 Insurance provided to its employees keep their family safe and secure. The short and
long term disability benefits are well seen by the company.
 Amazon provides it employees with restricted stock units.
 Maternity and paternal leave is also grated before and after child birth.
 Employees get discount on products sold on amazon.
 Career enhancement and development programme is done time to time across the
globe to enhance the professional skills of the employees.
Amazon has always been a performance oriented company but now with the change in
thoughts and working ethics is more concentrated towards skill development. So that they can
manage their professional and personal life easily. By including PIVOT program and also by
encouraging diversity in organisation. The company is focusing more on fostering both
performance and satisfaction at all levels (Amazon 2019).
Challenges faced by organisations in economy constraints environment.
Human resources plays the most important part of any organisation. An organisation
is successful when it has right people at the right position. The process of recruiting right
work force in the organisation has become a complex matter. The human resource retention is
a major challenge in today’s world. And the effect is more prominent when the economy is
unstable. Human resource planning is ongoing process. It is seen that the human resource
planning is stable in a stable economy but it becomes complex in an unstable economy. An

8ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
unstable economy is when it is high on unemployment, numerous bankruptcy, trade deficit,
financial crisis or bank failure (Bratton et al. 2017).
Challenges faced to retain high performing work force:
Monetary constrained: An unstable economy causes liquidity crunch thereby affecting the
payment of salaries, and allowances. The fund constrain also minimises funds for training
and development. In a constraint economy workshops, conferences and other skill
development activity are not done which affects the resources skills development. Ultimately
leading to skill gap. These thing affects the recruitment process also. These also decrease
interest for the candidates to apply for any post in any particular organisation.
Unemployment and brain drain: Economic constraints increase unemployment and brain
drain as most of the experiences and high skilled work force try to move out of the stagnant
economy to a more developed economy. Even after the advertisements and several follow up
the post remains vacant due to the unattractive salary structure. Ultimately a low productive
or unskilled work force is recruited compromising the productivity of the organisation.
Full time to part time: when the economy is unstable the company tries ways to cut cost.
This can lead to recruitment of unskilled labour. If this is not wanted than the organisation
can go for a part time recruitment. The cost to the company decreases and the skill wanted is
also uncompromised.
Perks and allowance: when the economy is under constrains than the company needs to give
away some perks and allowance for the running of a healthy environment in the organisation.
Some of the schemes launched by the company keeps the employees motivated and hopeful.
For example home scheme, free transport, over time payment and also advance salary
payment.

9ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
Majority of the companies in these unstable economic condition takes steps like
outsourcing, of noncore activities, offering part time on large scale, harnessing new sectors to
earn more profit and the best is to develop technology to cut cost.
It was seen that in 2008 when the world was hit by recession. The whole economy
faced an upside down phase. At that time Amazon made the highest profit and was able to
give customer satisfied service. This can be attributed to Amazon’s strict working
environment and policies. But over the period of time Amazon has changed its perception
towards employee which has changed the company retention percentage.
Reference
Amazon (2019). About Amazon. [online] US About Amazon. Available at:
https://www.aboutamazon.com/ [Accessed 9 Feb. 2019].
BECKERSHOSPITAL (2019). 9 key issues with Amazon's corporate culture. [online]
Beckershospitalreview.com. Available at: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-
management-administration/9-key-issues-with-amazon-s-corporate-culture.html [Accessed 9
Feb. 2019].
Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
HBS (2019). What's Wrong With Amazon’s Low-Retention HR Strategy?. [online] HBS
Working Knowledge. Available at: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/is-something-wrong-with-
amazon-s-low-retention-hr-strategy [Accessed 9 Feb. 2019].
Kuruvilla, S. and Ranganathan, A., 2008. Economic development strategies and macro-and
micro-level human resource policies: The case of India's “outsourcing” industry. ILR Review,
62(1), pp.39-72.

10ESSAY ON DEVELOPING PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS AT AMAZON
Nelson (2019). Amazon corporate culture | Strategic HR Planning. [online] Nelson.com.
Available at: http://www.nelson.com/hrmnow/belcourt/tag/amazon-corporate-culture/
[Accessed 9 Feb. 2019].
Pratap, A. (2019). HR Management at Amazon: Need for Employee Satisfaction. [online]
cheshnotes. Available at: https://www.cheshnotes.com/2017/02/hr-management-at-amazon-
need-for-employee-satisfaction/ [Accessed 9 Feb. 2019].
Smither, R., Houston, J. and McIntire, S., 2016. Organization development: Strategies for
changing environments. Routledge.