Analyzing Strategic Human Resource Challenges in Amazon's Operations

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the strategic human resource management challenges faced by Amazon. It identifies employee turnover and work-life imbalance as key issues impacting the company's operations and future success. The essay emphasizes the importance of strategic human resource management (SHRM) in addressing these challenges, discussing the SHRM model, including vertical and horizontal integration. It explores various strategies such as management by objectives, the Harvard model of HRM, and the resource-based view to improve employee retention and work-life balance. The essay highlights the significance of employee value proposition, training, and development to enhance employee productivity and mitigate potential issues. The conclusion reinforces the necessity of proactive SHRM implementation to ensure Amazon's sustained growth and competitiveness, emphasizing the need for attention to various factors within the SHRM model to prevent future challenges.

Running head: Challenges in Amazon 1
Strategic Human Resource Management
Potential challenges in Amazon

Challenges in Amazon 2
The essay will explain the importance of strategic human resource management in the company
as it facilitates to attain the target of the company in an efficient manner. Amazon is a well
known company around the world that provides high quality of products and services to many
customers in every area. It is developed company that covers a number of countries such as
India, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Netherlands, Spain, Germany and so on in which
more than 2.3 millions employee provide efficient services to the customers. However, every
company has to face some critical situation which may impact the entire operation of the
company adversely. In the context of Amazon, two major issues of the company will be
recognized which can be the cause of failure in future. The role of strategic human resource
management provides emphasis to the need for the strategies and activities of human resource to
be initiated within the strategies of the organization. The model of SHRM will be evaluated in an
efficient manner that would be assisted to understand the role of it in removing the obstacles of
the company.

Challenges in Amazon 3
Amazon is well-known company that headquarter is situated on Seattle's beacon hill,
Washington, US. The product lines of the company are in books, music &movies, consumer
electronics, foods &households and Clothing & Jewellery, home &garden, Tools &automotive
and Computer &office. I am currently working with this company as an Employee relations
project manager. The company has many competitors that deal with same work and has the
potential to attract a number of employees in an adequate manner. However, the marketing
strategy and the financial condition of this company are effective that become the strength of it to
protect any kind of challenges. The recent revenue of the company is 17,786 crores USD that
shows the high goodwill of the company in the market of e-commerce.

Challenges in Amazon 4
There can be a number of challenges faced by a company that may impact the overall
productivity of the entire organization. Two challenges of them will be elaborated below that
help company to take appropriate actions before implementing them. These two challenges will
tell about to retain the employees as there is a number of competitors available in the market that
has the ability to attract skilled employees of the company which would be the biggest loss for
the company. In next, increasing concern with life balance management will be defined in the
context of maintaining the life balance of employees so that they can perform in a well efficient
manner within the organization. Two challenges are defined below:
1- Employee turnover
The competition has increased day by day due to the adoption of latest technology by many
companies of e-commerce. It would be the biggest challenge for the company in which the
employees of the company can attract towards other companies. The other company can offer
them a high salary in comparison to Amazon that being the major cause of losing a skilled
employee. It is essential for the company to retain the employees by offering them various
benefits factors such as progress platform, increment slab of 6 months and training program
where they can attain personal growth. It is required by the company to understand those areas
that require change so that the employee can learn new things in the organization. It has been
found that the layoffs of Amazon are the outcome of the rapid success of late that saw it end up
with too much staff in some units (Ritala, Golnam and Wegmann, 2014). The employees of the
company are under pressure to grasp out lower caliber employee and represent more spending
discipline (Heskett, 2015). It is vital for the company to find out skilled employees who can be
considered as the valuable asset for the company.

Challenges in Amazon 5
2- Increasing concern with work-life balance
The company can face the issue regarding work-life balance as it has been analyzed that the
work load in the company is high which can be considered as the over burdened. Overburden is
pressuring the number of employees of the company in which they do not make work-life
balance. It has been said by some former Amazonians that nurturing bosses are liable for slow
separations protected them for the pressure of unmanageable conditions, on the other hand, many
said that the effective culture of the company motivated them to remove work-life boundaries
(Braun and Peus, 2016). For example, employees of the company are spending most of their time
from home at nights and on the weekend. It has been analyzed in against of these statements that
one of the employees of the company did not sleep for four days straight (Kantor and Streitfeld,
2015).
It is necessary for the company to identify the appropriate strategy which enhance the
productivity of the employee and reduce the impact of potential issues over the company. The
appropriate strategy can be competitive advantages, business strategy, corporate culture and
external market that can help to increase the productivity of the employees. These strategies help
business to emphasize how it defines to do well in its opted market place (Michie and Sheehan,
2005). It is the effective strategy which targets competitive advantages. It helps to decide the
way in which the business is ready to create its own environment. Along with that, there is
another strategy such as
Strategic human resource management is the process in which the manager can design the
components of human resource system to be consistent with each other. It is considered as the
strategy of the proactive and tactical management of HR processes which aim to deliver short-
term strategic goals of the company. It has special alignments of the processes of HR with

Challenges in Amazon 6
interim goals of the business. The model of strategic human resource management entails
various aspects that support business to attain the objectives of the company. This model will be
helpful for the company to increase the efficiency of the employee in a significant manner (Diehl
and Bishop, 2017).
Figure 1: SHRM Model
Source: (Schuler and Jackson, 2008).
It is the model that is fit for external fit (vertical integration) and internal fit (horizontal
integration) in which vertical integration covers the competitive strategy by which company is
able to control the one or more steps in the commodity. In the context of horizontal integration, it
can be said that it is the competitive strategy which helps to increase the company value. In the
context of reducing the possible chance of potential challenges of the company, the role of
SHRM model is huge. With help of management by objectives, the company can retain the

Challenges in Amazon 7
employees significantly. There are some major steps of the company such as revise the
objectives of the organization, explaining the objectives of the company to the employees,
involve the employees in the decision-making process, monitoring the progress of the company
in the context of attaining the objectives and the last step of the management by objective is to
evaluate the performance and reward them appropriately (Sajeevanie, 2015).
According to this model it is vital for the human resource department of the Amazon to keep
focus on retention strategy. There is a huge challenge of increasing employee turnover that may
impact the entire organization adversely (Mahapatra, 2018). With the component of performance
management and total rewards system, the company will be able to retain the employees
(Kramar, 2014). Employees of the Amazon are facing issues regarding less pay, the overburden
of work, inefficient hiring techniques and improper training that can increase the high employee
turnover in coming years for the company. The strategic human resource management should be
implemented within the operation of the company as it facilitates to reduce the chance of attrition
rate of the employees.

Challenges in Amazon 8
Figure 2: Companies with least loyal employees
Source: (Mahapatra, 2018).
The above-mentioned figure shows that Amazon is one of them that payscale to the employees is
least. It is vital for the company to improve the pay scale of the employees otherwise due to
higher competition in this sector may increase the risk of employee turnover. The strategic
human resource model can assist the company to retain employee by following the Harvard
Model of HRM in which HR manager of Amazon will focus on assessment, promotion,
recruitment, training, and development of the employees (Greve and Song, 2017). According to
the Harvard model of SHRM the strategy of human resource focuses on the employee influence,
reward system and proper work system which connect the company with business strategy.
There is another issue of increasing concern regarding work-life balance as the employee of the
Amazon has overburdened work in which they are unable to manage the proper structure of
maintaining work-life balance. However, it has been found from the article that Jeff Bezos does
not like the idea of work life balance instead of this he has trust on word harmony to the word
balance because balance involves a strict trade-off. According to review of the employees who
has more than one year experience with Amazon, it has been found that there is no work life
balance because the timing of working is flexible that creates the imbalance in the life of the
employees. SHRM model can be helpful for the company to maintain the work life balance so
that company cannot face issues of it in future. Resource-based view is the model of SHRM that
defines influence on the strategic human resource management of the company (Prajogo, Mena
and Nair, 2018).

Challenges in Amazon 9
It is certain that company runs with major two components such as resources and products or
services. It is a helpful theory that helps organization to decide remain resources with the
organization and link them with the abilities of the Amazon Company in silent way. It is
essential for the company to keep the focus on the resources to maintain the work-life balance as
this theory explains that Amazon can retain the excellent skills because of the availability of the
non-suitable slot of resources in the company. It would be helpful for the company to connect
with an economy of the world. The model of SHRM offers organization powerful tools by which
company can perform in an efficient manner.
It has been found that the employee of the company has complained about bosses because they
are unable to manage the work and the leader of the company does not support them efficiently.
It is the major reason that increases within the business and raises the concern of imbalance
because employees’ time consumes in making understanding about the software or other services
which create work-life imbalance (Heskett, 2015).
it is necessary for the HR department of the company to have the proper system of training and
development by which the employees will learn how to manage work with the smart way so that
they can manage their work-life balance promptly. HR audits and employee value proposition
would be beneficiary for the company because the proper evaluation of the human resource
policies, system, and documentation can enhance the awareness of the employee as well as a
company (Lussier and Hendon, 2017). Employee value proposition is considered as the set of
associations as well as offerings offered by a company in return for the capabilities, skills and
experiences an employee carries to the company.

Challenges in Amazon 10
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Amazon can face issues regarding employee
turnover and work-life imbalance in future. The role of SHRM model is efficient in reducing the
impact of these issues on the company. There is number of factors that entail in the SHRM
Model that is why it is required for the company to focus on each factor of this model to prevent
the potential issues. HRM Harvard mode, management by objectives and resource-based view
are some models that are a part of SHRM model. The description about them has been elaborated
with efficient manner which make clear understanding about the SHRM Model and its use within
the operation of the company to reduce the impact of potential concern.

Challenges in Amazon 11
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Challenges in Amazon 12
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