Learning And Development At Amazon

Organisational context

Discuss about the Learning and Development.

Learning and development as referred by Li et al. (2015), encompasses both the varieties of on-the-job and off-the-job trainings, knowledge and skill development of the employees of an organisation. In other words, it is also termed as human resource development or training and development. Learning as defined by Mellor et al, (2017), is a process of acquiring new knowledge and skills and to reform or modify one’s attitude in an effective manner so that he or she is able to meet the company’s current goals and aims. It is also aimed to increase efficiency and knowledge of the employees by modifying their skills and abilities towards their responsibilities so that they all can perform at higher levels.

Amazon is a global retail organisation which has more than 341K employees all over the world and still they are adding more employees in recent days also for various management and operations of their organisation (Caloghirou et al. 2017). Apart from other hi-tech leaders of the world like Apple, Google and Netflix, Amazon is noteworthy for its life-work balance issues. It really emphasize strictly on employees’ development and works really in an intellectual manner to maintain their unharmed reputation at the highest peak among its competitors. The organisation spends more than $13 million per year for its training purposes (Mathew and Zacharias 2017). As talent of the employees are the main pillars of the success of an organisation, the global spend for employee training and development also sparks upto $360 billion.

Amazon aims to sells high standard products in order to please their customers to the fullest. Its mission statement is also based on high satisfaction to the customers and this mission statement also acts a driving force of all major decisions of the organisation. Its mission and vision is that they want to be the most customer centric organisation where people can discover and find anything that they want to buy online (Umar et al., 2016). This is the reason why they largely emphasize on training development and this assignment will highlight the learning and development features and aspects of the company with which they train their employees.

Amazon being the topmost leading global retail organisations continuously improvise their techniques involved in training and development of the employees so that they can bring the best from them (Caloghirou et al. 2017). Their vision statement shows of the amazon forecasts that they are trying their best to dominate over all other retail industries in a global aspect with effective and high quality care to its customers and delivering high end products to them.

Behaviourism in Training and Development

Amazon has already launched a training program for underperforming employees under experts called Career ambassadors who are responsible to give appropriate support and guidance to improve performances of those employees. The new program is called Pivot and it is subjected to these employees for over a fixed period of time. It is a very stringent programme as it has been mentioned in Business Insider (2017) that it involves hard working culture and every employee are being vigilantly scrutinized in this training. Pivot is only applied to those employees who underperform even after support and coaching. It is so strict that it provides employees only with 3 options and these are –

1. Voluntary leaves the organisation if they can’t undertake this rigorous training
2. Improve performance with this training
3. Appeal their managers to place them in Pivot

The dedicated team of Pivot continuously guide these employees over a speculated period for their noteworthy improvisations and increasing their skills and tactics.

Learning and development includes various types of theories but different organisation in respect to their size and aim chose different theories for development and training purpose of the employees. Behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and connectivism are all part of these theories (Reynolds 2017). Amazon being a global retail organisation uses behaviourism in its training and development of the employees. The organisation always strives to provide best for its customers and thus with change in demands and preferences of the consumers as well as technology development, they have to upgrade their policies and procedures from time to time. This is one of the reasons why Pivot was introduced in the beginning of 2017 (Business Insider 2017). Behaviourism is the learning theory where the instructor would praise the employees if he do well accordingly as he was instructed or else he would be punished. This is an effective yet strict learning application on all the employees where they can get accustomed to organisation’s new strategy and policies.

Now, this training and development have also some influencing factors that either benefits or harms the training and development. These factors are called PESTLE factors and it is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social, Technology, Legal and Environmental factors. These factors will be described below in brief.

Political factors- in every single organisation there exists some political parties which influence organisational environment to a great extent. Employees who are irresponsible in their duty might hold on to the dominant party to make his position secure in the workplace. This creates difficulty to the eligible employees and also hampers management. Politics decreases overall productivity by making the employees less attentive and it can induce back biting and unnecessary criticism also (Boud et al. 2013). It creates negative environment in the workplace and thus affects concentration. The employees sometimes also change their attitude due to this politics and stress is increased over the eligible and responsible employees who are not into clutches of the dominant political party. Wrong information is also provided to the superiors which creates a major negative impact on the workplace (Cummings and Worley 2014). This can even turn down the intelligent minds of the organisation and the company can even fail to retain the eligible employees.

PESTLE Factors and Their Impact on Amazon

Other political factors that affect Amazon are political stability of various countries as it is a global organisation, support of the government for e-commerce and increasing efforts of the government on cyber security. Now, these are all the external factors due to which the enterprise has to strive its best al the time to maintain their unharmed public reputation and to retain their customers globally.

Economic factors- Amazon being a leading global retailer, has to depend on the economic condition of the area where it operates its online business (Cummings and Worley 2014). The economic factors are increasing disposable income in developing countries, economic stability of developed markets and susceptible economic recession of China which is obviously a threat to the organisation.

As the economic stability of the countries will enhance, it will also benefit Amazon in an overall aspect. Economic stability reduces economic issues in business prospects in macro environment. It also fosters employees training and development in a well organised manner which consists of modern business tools and software that can help employees better their performances (Boud et al. 2013). This on the other hand enables the organisation to expand their boundary successfully. The Chinese market holds big hopes to Amazon as it is one of their great markets and in future when there will be economic stability in China, Amazon hopes to penetrate increasingly in there.

Social factors- these also play an important role in macro environment of a business. Social factors that affect Amazon are increasing wealth disparity, increasing online purchasing habits of the customers and increasing consumerism in developing countries. Among all these, the first one is a threat and the last two social factors are opportunity to the organisation (Greenspan 2017). Increasing buying habits and consumerism would help the training experts to focus on the areas with which they can improve the customer care service and their satisfaction and thus can train the employees accordingly. Increasing wealth disparity means increasing gap between poor and rich in various countries. On the other hand, higher disposable income is convenient for increasing revenues of e-commerce business like Amazon.

Technological factors- being an E-commerce organisation, amazon is largely impacted by technological advancement. The technological experts have to modify the features of the online Amazon store so that it eases customers’ online shopping experience (Billett and Choy 2013). The web designers of the organisation are also trained accordingly as per the technological advancement of the company. Rapid technical advancement acts as both opportunity and threat to the organisation. Increasing IT efficiency due to effective training and existing intellectual minds of the organisation can benefit Amazon to a large extent. Simultaneously, increasing cybercrime also creates threat for this organisation which intelligent hackers of the organisation are responsible to combat.

Legal factors- legal factors play an important role in all of the operative areas of a business. The important legal factors include regulation of rising product, ease of import and export regulations and rising regulations of environment protection (Greenspan 2017). All of these acts as opportunities and are largely responsible to reduce counterfeit sale on online website of Amazon. Due to this, amazon can expand its global boundaries as sellers can now access overseas supplies.

Environmental factors- environmental factors like rising interest in environmental programs, business sustainability and expanding popularity of low carbon lifestyles acts as opportunities for amazon. Amazon shows significant corporate social responsibility which also facilitates growth of its business. Moreover popularity of low carbon lifestyle also provides the business with increasing corporate image.

Horizontal integration as defined by Staff (2017), is the ability of a business to acquire additional business activities that lies on the same value chain in relevant or other organisations. It can be acquired either by the external expansion through a merger or internal expansion via reinvestment. Horizontal integration also called by lateral integration also implies the merging of two or more relevant or other companies at the same point in production process. Amazon from 2016 as unveiled PayPal that is equivalent to pay with Amazon and this has been a noticing feature in the global aspect of this organisation (Space 2017). This feature has benefited various retailers of the organisation by providing a secured way of shipping and credit card information without the hassle of filling personal forms.

The purpose of the horizontal integration is to expand the size of the business by capturing random markets of the relevant organisation. This can be achieved by analysing external and internal factors of a business in the form of SWOT and PESTLE analysis, strategic management, monitoring and evaluation of the same (Burke and Noumair 2015). A company has to continuously upgrade its features to hold onto its position so that it can have competitive advantage over others. A organisation has to train its employees from time to time to increase their potentials so that with their intellectuality the company is able to reach its targets.

Amazon’s hierarchical organisational structure enables the business to have extensive control on global e-commerce operations. An organisational structure establishes interactions among the members of the organisation (Moon 2013). For instance, Amazon’s organisational structure defines how different managers would direct and influence various operations of various disciplines. A corporate culture can benefit amazon as it has diversified operations of various disciplines. The main aim of the organisational structure of this business is to determine interaction among components of the organisation and these includes global hierarchy, geographic divisions and global function-based groups.

Global function-based groups enable the organisation to have ongoing global expansion of e-commerce through a dedicated group of team of every single discipline directed by a senior manager (O’Brien and Jones 2014). It is the strongest characteristic of organisational structure of Amazon. Global hierarchy is the traditional organisational structure of the organisation. For instance, senior manager directives are applied all throughout the global branches of the Amazon. It facilitates managerial control of the organisation. Geographic division eases management of e-commerce business that is based on economic conditions of certain regions. It helps to address any business issues or concerns in any geographical location.

Amazon’s organisational culture is full of innovation, strictness and it all matters in bringing the best from every single employee (Serrat 2017). Team work is highly motivated in Amazon but each of these team members compete with each other to perform efficiently and intellectually when it comes to individual output in their team.

Training and development aims to benefit both the organisation and its customers. Training consists of a series of learning steps and experiences that builds knowledge and infuses efficiency in the employees (Edwards et al. 2013). Learning motivates employees to work better with responsibility and determination to achieve something great both as an individual and for the organisation. It is thus important to add value to this learning and development. Amazon has three main strategies with which they add value to their training purposes and these are –

• Selling and bringing products to the customers that are value for money- training brings new skills in the employees with whom they add value to the services and products of the customers (Cordingley 2015). This enables the organisation to charge reasonable and exact price for the products to benefit the online shopping experience of the customers.
• Investing in the environment within stores- better efficiency and technical skills in sales department and stock management of the organisation identifies that staff can use the store for bettering the advantage with higher sales and increasing profit by retaining maximum customers.
• Providing good customer care service- customer care is an omnipotent part of Amazon. If staffs are equipped with technical skills and knowledge, they can create a positive impact on the customer care service with which the customers will be satisfied and brand image of the organisation will also remain unharmed (Wilson 2014).

L&D budget

The estimated cost of learning and development of the employees is $2million. It includes-

Development of communication skills- $800

Equipment and tools- $1500

Administrative cost-$800

Office cost-$1000

Developing individual skills and knowledge-$4000

Monitoring-$3500

Evaluation-$5000

There are range of tools and techniques that are used to identify the learning and development needs of the employees. The steps are described below-

• Career planning: in this step the training experts or the managers meet team members to discuss long term career options and short term learning requirements within the organisation (Granott 2013). Together they are able to find out the deficient areas which have to be modified. It can also be done with a performance review also.
• Recognition of prior learning or RPL: it is the recognition of the skills and knowledge that an employee already holds. It is recognised with the evidence of their competency standards (Liben 2013). The skills are either taken from national competency standard or organisation’s list of skills that are required to perform a specific task. By going through these skills, a training expert can make out the gaps that have to be fulfilled in the employee.
• Observing the team- by observing the team and their individual performance, a training expert or a manager can make out how well they are performing and how much they need to be improved.
• Discussion with individuals- it shall only occur when immediate attention has to be given to an employee so that they can perform their duties sincerely and effectively (Granott 2013).
• Workplace skills assessment- this can assist an individual to identify knowledge gaps and skills comparable against the set of standard of skill
• Self-evaluation- team members can be encouraged to self-assess their work and improvement areas so that they are motivated to perform better. It can be done by maintaining thorough communication with the team members, discussing plan with them and listening to their queries.

This can be evaluated with the help of SWOT analysis which is an acronym for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat (Arends 2014). It helps to identify both internal and external factors in an organisation and helps in improvement and taking measure of the deficit areas.

Kolb’s experimental learning theory helps in learning and development in four stages and these are described below-

1. Concrete experience- it is the phase when a situation is brought forth infront of the employees for introducing new skills into them or a reinterpretation of the existing situation is done so that the employees are infused with new ideas and knowhow with their existing set of tactics.
2. Reflective observation- this helps to highlight any inconsistencies that exist between experience and learning. It reviews or reflects on the experience (Kolb 2014).
3. Abstract conceptualisation- the above stage gives either new ideas or modifications of the existing knowledge. It helps to conclude things that one has learned from the experience.
4. Active experimentation- whatever individuals learn in training courses, they apply that in the real world to see the outcomes (Li et al. 2015).

Kolb’s experimental learning will be applied in learning and development of the employees of the organisation with the help of the following steps-

1. Assessing the training needs- every single employee of Amazon has different sets of responsibilities so, it is important to assess their training need at first (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013). Development sessions can be arranged for this purpose.
2. Set organisational objective- the training gaps will be identified in training assessments. Later these gaps after analysis and prioritisation, will be converted to organisation’s training objectives
3. Creating action plan- Action plan can be done with the help of RPL and this will help the trainer to draw out the competency standard of the employees and it will also help to develop ways of making their performance better (Arends 2014). This can be done by observing the team and assessing their performance.
4. Implementing training initiative- after analysing all the needs and setting organisational objectives along with action plan, it has to be implemented in reality so that it betters the performance of the employees.
5. Evaluation- strict monitoring has to be done during training. Peer reviews can also be used in evaluation (Renninger et al. 2014). Feedbacks can be obtained from the stakeholders for analysing the approach and training procedures can be revised with the help of SWOT analysis.

The Kirkpatrick model will help in evaluation of the training. The four steps of this model is mentioned below-

Reaction- it is the degree with which the participants get comfortable with the training that are relevant to their specific roles and responsibilities (Abdulghani et al. 2014). From this, it will be easier to understand if the employees are getting equipped with new idea and approach and how much they are interested in the training.

Learning- it is the extent of knowledge which the participants acquire from their training. By assessing their performances it will be easier to detect how much they are able to apply the ideas they have learnt from training sessions.

Behaviour- it is the extent of application of the ideas of the employees on the real field after attaining the training (Jehanzeb and Bashir 2013). By strict monitoring and taking peer and stakeholder feedback, it will be easier how effective employees are working.

Results- it is the degree of targeted outcomes that are expected from the employees after this training program.

ROI-Return on Investment is an addition upon the above model. It helps to estimate the projected costs of a training program before a green light is showed about initiation of the training procedures (Barrett et al. 2015). It also gives an idea of potential profit that could be made with this training. With ROI, the training budget that has been mentioned earlier can also be evaluated.

ROE- Return on expectations demonstrates organisational value of training. It is the delivery of satisfaction to the stakeholders by good initiatives of the employees who have attended the training. This can be done by taking customer feedback and their reviews.

Conclusion

This assignment has described how learning and development can be initiated in an organisation. It also explained how learning theories can be applied in development and training of the employees. It also helped in evaluation of the training in a successful manner.

References

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