- Amazon remains committed to being "the best employer in the world," the workers said.
- Amazon came up with the idea for Best Employer before there was a clear definition of what that meant.
- Employees asked about this at meetings, but managers tried to give a clear definition.
Amazon's bid to be the world's best employer is unraveling.
The Earth's Best Employer initiative, announced in July 2021, days before company CEO Andy Jassy is set to replace company founder Jeff Bezos, aims to reinvigorate the company's positive workplace. The company has added the slogan "Strive to be the World's Best Employer" to its 16 guiding principles.
But 18 months after its launch, workers say the biggest employer project on Earth is far from over. The company's growing bureaucracy has drawn scorn from many employees: "Day 2," dubbed "Day 1," is a mockery of Amazon's culture of speed and urgency. Meanwhile, employees still complain about a toxic, secretive culture, aren't notified when they're on a performance improvement plan, and managers have little control over how employees are evaluated.
Current and former employees told experts that the initiative lacked direction and that leaders struggled to clearly explain what the initiative was supposed to accomplish or deliver tangible results. Amazon officials are following various party lines in announcing the initiative, but their actions will exacerbate a toxic culture workers have complained about for years.
"I don't know what they're doing to be the best employer in the world," one employee told Insider. "It doesn't seem like anything has changed, I don't see it seeping into the culture yet."
Insider spoke with 20 current and former employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Their identities are known to the initiates.
"This is not because insiders and a handful of anonymous sources among millions of current and former employees are saying something isn't happening," an Amazon spokesperson told Insider. "We also know that there are always ways to improve within our company, and we will continue to focus our energy on this so that we can improve every day for our employees, customers and partners."
Company officials make vague promises
The whistleblower obtained transcripts of three company-wide meetings in which Jassy and Beth Galetti, Amazon's director of human resources, were pressured by employees to explain the goals or results of the Best Employer on Earth initiative.
These employees told Insider that their answers seemed irrelevant.
In the year At a general meeting in November 2021, Jassy tried to define the purpose of the movement. First of all, he mentions the improvement of working conditions in warehouses, workers often suffer back and joint injuries due to their work.
He went on to talk about giving employees a "fair, long and fulfilling job" and leading them with passion. To that end, Amazon's executive team, known internally as the S-Team, meets "at least once a month" to work on those issues, he said.
So it seems to suggest that customer satisfaction should be an employer's greatest goal on earth. Eventually, Jassy seemed to give up on a coherent answer. "The reality is that you can't do it all," he said. “All of them will be a series of initiatives that we will work on for a long time.
A year later, their answers became more ambiguous. Job security, competitive pay and a mission-driven culture remained the company's overarching goals, but he did not specify how he would measure success.
He added that the Best Employer on Earth initiative should focus on developing meritocracy and long-term goals for the company. Other words he used to describe it included low politics, direct mutual respect, non-commitment, and giving back to communities.
They also implied that the initiative is "subjective" because each employee has different ideas about what it means to be a better workplace.
At another general meeting in April last year, Galetti repeated some of the same talking points as Jassi. In addition, Amazon identified 100 pain points related to the World's Best Employer initiative, naming 28 at the time. These include revamping its employee compensation and stock purchase program and building a new team aimed at improving its idle engineering culture.
A full list of symptoms has not been shared with employees, but Galetti stressed that Amazon's culture change is not a top-down initiative.
"Don't wait until we have all the answers centrally, because I think we want everyone to be the best employer in the world," he said, according to a report of the meeting obtained by Insider.
Recently, according to a person familiar with the matter, a list of employee opinions on who is the best employer should receive more than 80 different responses. The list included many common factors, such as higher wages and a better work-life balance, but also included things like "be nice to employees" and "allow fulfillment center employees to join unions." man.
In an 11-page internal study from October 2021, Amazon employees said the company was not "particularly innovative" and linked Amazon's culture to an atmosphere of stress, burnout, abandonment and unforgiveness, Insider previously reported. It also identified six key factors that make Amazon the best employer in the world, including better pay-life balance, career growth opportunities, a positive and innovative work culture, and social responsibility.
The company noted moral failures after the layoffs.
Despite these modest improvements in Amazon's workplace culture, employees say the initiatives of the world's largest employer do not align with Amazon's core culture.
During Amazon's rigorous annual operational planning process, when teams answer questions about key company initiatives such as diversity or climate efforts, the employer's top initiative is never mentioned, according to people familiar with the process. And while Amazon often asks candidates about the company's leadership principles, they rarely mention the Earth's Best Employer initiative.
Lately, company layoffs have damaged morale. Now, rumors of more layoffs this year are making Amazon employees even more nervous, five people familiar with the matter told Insider.
A senior employee said there was talk of cutting more corporate jobs by the end of the year, on top of the 18,000 last month. The company is considering a more subtle form of layoffs this year by increasing the number of people designated for underperforming reviews or performance improvement plans, as many are often fired, according to employees familiar with the matter.
For many Amazon employees, the lack of clarity about last month's layoffs seemed to contradict the company's employer-first credo.
Amazon did not widely share its restructuring plan with employees until it was published. Even the leaders did not know. As Insider previously reported, most of the cancellations were notified via email without prior notice or a face-to-face meeting.
"They treated him very badly," said a fired former employee. "If they lead by example, no, Amazon hasn't set that standard."
Internally, the company's handling of the strikes has left some workers yearning for Bezos' leadership.
"Bezos never faked it. It was all about performance," said one current employee. "I respect that Jassy has brought in these new tenants, maybe people who don't want to commit suicide on the job every day, but he didn't back down and he stood his ground."
As Insider previously reported, recent research by Justin Hastings, one of the vice presidents leading the Earth's Best Employers Initiative, further influenced employee morale. Hastings is accused of abusing Amazon's performance improvement plan and undermining employees, creating a hostile work environment. Hastings, who reports to Galetti, typically leads a team of researchers, data scientists and economists who study and improve Amazon's work culture.
According to employees, the lack of action orientation has greatly reduced the impact on the company's corporate culture.
"We had a good idea before deciding on the employer," said one of the men. "Nobody knows what it means or why it's important."
As the economy deteriorates, some workers believe that Amazon's Best Employer initiative is just a "marketing ploy." Now that the job market has changed, Amazon has no reason to waste its resources to deliver on its promises.
It was for show anyway," said another employee. "Amazon has gone through the phase of pretending to care about its employees. That phase is over."
Do you work at Amazon? Do you have any advice?
Contact reporter Eugene Kim via the encrypted messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or via email (ekim@insider.com).