Case Study: Amazon as Employer

Name: Hemang Chauhan

Roll No.: p40015
Section: A

Situation analysis
Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos work ethic culture was thought to be great and cheery when it
was initially based their overall performances. But after the New York Times expose was
when it was realized it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. It was found that the company focused
on inspiring employees to be ruthlessly critical about each other’s idea and feedback to each
other’s bosses. The employees were expected to put in long hours and to work overtime,
effectively forcing them to work harder and faster until they quit, collapsed or terminated. So,
the stress level at the workplace was too and because of it, the employee satisfaction was too
low. The turnout rate was very high, because of this. Despite this, Amazon has climbed the
ladder of achievements and accomplishments in terms of market value. According to Bezos,
the key was to work long, hard, and smart.

Every section of the workforce has to face problems in some way. Software Developers were
forced into making business development reports and work backwards with their work, the
failure of which could lead to ideas being deemed “not worth it. Female workers were
distrusted, and it was thought that child rearing activities thought to distract from their work.
In regards to the downranking of the firm, Bezos wrote a memo to all the employees
mentioning that he was hoping the article was not being recognised by them and they believe
in working with brilliant talent, helping invent the future, and laugh. They should approach
HR or the CEO itself if they feel any kind of hindrance or discrimination in the company.

Situation analysis
In given work culture and Amazon, on the verge of opening new offices in diverse locations,
which would expand the capacity to 50,000 employees, would it continue to be a competitive
employer?

Criteria :
1. Stress Level of employees
2. Hinderace in Individual and Team work
3. Allocation of resources

Alternatives:

1. Hierarchy based workflow, with a dedicated project manager.

2. Shift based strict working , assignment of work to the individual should
be by the project manager/tech-lead.
Recommended Approach:
First approach is recommended. The work needs to be given in a proper channel to every
employee, irrespective of their time of working. Need to set up a hierarchy where the project
manager first get the project form client which contains specific requirements and then it
needs to be reviewed by tech lead of the team and then it needs to be re-reviewed with the
entire team, and it should allow every employee to give inputs before finalising the deal,
when the Final version of SRS( system requirement specifications ) is ready then the
ownership of each function of project should be given to different employees and then they
need to allow to work on their own. Daily standup meeting should be there where the team
discuss the progress of the project informally and can help each other if they need to learn
something. To deal with the hindrance being created because of queries in night hours, one
member from every team need to be put on-call for one week(24x7), let’s call it the primary
point of contact and another one employee as the secondary point of contact who deals with
the query only in office hours(Hours in which he is there in the company with no shift or time
duration restrictions ), and this on-call duty needs to be on turn basis where every member
have to be on call for one week in a month. To increase the Male-female ratio, Amazon
should focus on top tech schools first when it comes to the knowledge and if they find the
best suit, irrespective of the ratio being followed at the colleges they should hire. No need of
special recruitment drives for female employees which is being practised by Microsoft and
adobe in software industry nowadays. Need to have a fair and anonymous feedback system.