Amazon Sees Need for Boosting Technical Skills of Its Workforce
10 Diciembre 2019 - 3:57PM
Noticias Dow Jones
By Chip Cutter
WASHINGTON -- When Amazon.com Inc.'s top human-resources
executive considers the skills the retail giant might need in its
workforce going forward, she has a quick answer.
"The most consistent thing we see changing is the need for some
level of technical skills in any job," Beth Galetti, the company's
senior vice president of world-wide HR said Tuesday at The Wall
Street Journal CEO Council gathering.
Amazon is in the midst of retraining a third of its U.S.
workforce, spending $700 million over roughly six years to help
everyone from fulfillment-center workers to software engineers
prepare for new types of work. But one of the challenges for
companies in helping workers gain new skills, management experts
say, is determining the needs of an organization years in
advance.
Ms. Galetti said the trend is clear: More jobs now involve
working with advanced software or machines, even in fields that
might not have traditionally required such digital acumen.
Fulfillment-center workers in warehouses must understand how to
work alongside automated tools, she said. Software engineers will
need a deeper understanding of more advanced skills, such as
machine learning. In the past five years, Amazon has seen a 500%
growth in roles such as data scientists and networking and security
engineers, she said.
"It's just explosive from the technical side," Ms. Galetti said.
"So we need to find ways to give those skills to the various
different... the breadth of employees that we have, in ways that
will allow them to evolve as the environment evolves."
Still, Amazon has made missteps in its retraining efforts, Ms.
Galetti said. A program called Amazon Career Choice pays 95% of
tuition and fees for certificates and degrees in high-demand fields
such as nursing, work that could take staffers outside of Amazon.
Early in the program, the company offered to pay for training in
professions such as aircraft mechanics even when workers would have
had to change cities to ultimately find work in the field.
Amazon has since had to "curate our programs down," matching
education with jobs available in the existing community, she
said.
More communities and employers are looking for ways to help
workers get new skills. Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago,
said the city found success by pairing employers with community
colleges to help them develop curriculum and make it easier for
students to find work. Mr. Emanuel said employers will relocate to
cities if they have a high degree of certainty that they will find
workers with the needed skills. "That is the biggest hustle right
now going on in the economy," he said at the WSJ CEO Council on
Tuesday.
To unearth insights about its workforce, Amazon now has more
than 600 engineers and developers building tools for the company's
HR team. Those employees work on projects for employees, such as
giving the company a sense of what motivates staffers. One recent
takeaway? Ms. Galetti said Amazon's data has shown that employees
don't leave a job because of a manager, as many might expect.
"The No. 1 thing that causes our employees to stay or leave is
whether they have access to do meaningful work," she said. "Are
they actually able to see the impact they're having? We will lose
employees if we don't satisfy that need much faster than if they're
working for a manager they may not get along with as well."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 10, 2019 16:42 ET (21:42 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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