Amazon's Internal Study of Its Culture in 2021 Found 'Stress, Burnout, Churn'

Business Insider reports:An official Amazon study run as part of the company's "Earth's Best Employer" initiative showed mounting employee frustration and other challenges around the time the crucial project was getting off the ground.... The 11-page document, created in October 2021 for Amazon's most senior leaders, gives a brutally honest assessment of employee sentiment.... "We learned we are not seen as distinctively innovative and that our innovation culture is not fun. Innovation at Amazon is associated with stress, burnout, churn, and a cut-throat atmosphere," the document said.... A competitive labor market was one of the main drivers for change, according to the report. Amazon anticipated a "tech talent shortage" of 6 million to 8 million workers in the US by 2030. The Amazon Web Services cloud business alone was projected to need 210,000 to 336,000 tech employees by 2031, or at least 123,000 additional workers. Yet, Amazon is not perceived as a particularly attractive workplace even by its own employees, the report found. Corporate employees said they were subject to long hours and exhausting workloads. Sometimes, even finding answers to trivial HR policies led to confusion. For frontline workers, Amazon wants to provide more behavioral health support and reduce injuries like musculoskeletal disorders, which are more common at its warehouses than other similar facilities ."Neither corporate nor front-line employees feel Amazon is a place they can clearly grow their careers and achieve personal success," the report stated. The report identified six areas where Amazon sees room for improvement, including work-life balance and compensation and benefits.

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