Jeff Bezos: 'We need to do a better job for our employees'
In This Article:
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (AMZN) and the world’s richest man, says the e-commerce giant needs to do a “better job” for its employees.
“I think we need to do a better job for our employees. While the voting results were lopsided and our direct relationship with employees is strong, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success,” Bezos wrote in his final shareholder letter as CEO, referring to the union vote at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama.
[Read more: Amazon Prime now has 200 million members, jumping 50 million in one year]
The 57-year-old Bezos added that news reports about the company suggest “we have no care for employees,” which he refutes. “In those reports, our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That’s not accurate. They’re sophisticated and thoughtful people who have options for where to work,” Bezos added.
Bezos pointed to employee surveys that show 94% would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work. He also noted that employees in fulfillment centers are permitted to take informal breaks “to stretch, get water, used the reset room, or talk to a manager,” in addition to the 30-minute lunch and 30-minute break.
“We don’t set unreasonable performance goals. We set achievable performance goals that take into account tenure and actual employee performance data. Performance is evaluated over a long period of time as we know that a variety of things can impact performance in any given week, day, or hour. If employees are on track to miss a performance target over a period of time, their manager talks with them and provides coaching,” Bezos said, later noting less than 2.6% of employees are terminated due to their inability to perform their jobs.
In the letter, Bezos wrote that Amazon has “always wanted to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company” he’s committing the company to be “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”
“In my upcoming role as Executive Chair, I’m going to focus on new initiatives. I’m an inventor. It’s what I enjoy the most and what I do best. It’s where I create the most value. I’m excited to work alongside the large team of passionate people we have in Ops and help invent in this arena of Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. On the details, we at Amazon are always flexible, but on matters of vision we are stubborn and relentless. We have never failed when we set our minds to something, and we’re not going to fail at this either,” Bezos wrote.