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In his final letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday laid out a broad vision for the future of the company, committing to extend Amazon’s famous obsession over its customers to the same level of care for its employees.
Bezos pointed to the recent union election outcome at one of Amazon’s Alabama warehouses as an example of why the company needs to address challenges within its workforce. Last week, Amazon secured enough votes to defeat a historic unionization drive at its Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse, which if successful would have represented the first union at a U.S. Amazon facility.
“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,” said Bezos, who will step down as CEO in the third quarter, turning the helm over to Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services. Bezos will become executive chairman of Amazon’s board.
In a statement, Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which led the campaign in Alabama, said the union election ignited a conversation about how Amazon treats its employees.
“Bezos’s admission today demonstrates that what we have been saying about workplace conditions is correct,” Appelbaum said. “But his admission won’t change anything, workers need a union – not just another Amazon public relations effort in damage control.”
Amazon has famously held a core set of leadership principles, chief among them being that the company is “customer obsessed.” In the future, Bezos said, he wants Amazon to do the same for its employees.
“Despite what we’ve accomplished, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for our employees’ success,” Bezos said. “We have always wanted to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company. We won’t change that. It’s what got us here. But I am committing us to an addition. We are going to be Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”
Bezos also rejected claims that Amazon has cultivated a brutal workplace culture in its warehouses. “Our employees are sometimes accused of being desperate souls and treated as robots. That’s not accurate,” he said.
In his new role as executive chairman, Bezos said he plans to focus on how to make Amazon’s warehouses safer. Roughly 40% of work-related injuries are sprains or strains mostly due to repeating the same motions and are common among new employees, he said.
To help reduce these types of injuries, Amazon is developing automated staffing schedules that rotate employees through different jobs that use other muscle-tendon groups. The company expects to begin deploying the technology later this year.
Bezos also took steps to ease shareholders’ fears about what a reimagined focus for the company might mean for Amazon’s future. He reiterated that it “remains Day 1” and highlighted continued growth at Amazon, including that the company now counts 200 million Prime subscribers, up from 150 million at the beginning of last year.
“If any shareowners are concerned that Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work might dilute our focus on Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, let me set your mind at ease,” Bezos said. “Think of it this way. If we can operate two businesses as different as consumer ecommerce and AWS, and do both at the highest level, we can certainly do the same with these two vision statements. In fact, I’m confident they will reinforce each other.”
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