Employee Engagement
With more than 1.6 million direct employees worldwide, employee engagement is fundamental to our success. Our goal is to hear from and listen to all of our employees. We have a variety of engagement, feedback, and remediation mechanisms that help us continually improve our workplace experience.
We believe candid and constructive communication in an environment of mutual respect is essential to our collective success.
Our open-door philosophy means we welcome and encourage any employee to discuss suggestions, concerns, or feedback with their manager, a Human Resources team member, or any member of Amazon’s leadership team.
These give employees a forum for expressing their concerns, offering suggestions, and asking questions on a daily basis. Leadership teams reply directly, promoting dialogue and efficient remediation of issues. In 2021, Amazon managers received and responded to more than 210,000 submissions.
Employees can choose to respond to a question or not. Individual responses are aggregated and shared with managers at the team level to maintain confidentiality. Connections analyzes response data and provides insights to managers and leaders to review and take actions as necessary.
During Associate Roundtable meetings, leaders hear directly from hourly associates, who can ask questions about any topic and share thoughts about their job, work environment, and any challenges they might be facing.
Additionally, we have dozens of Associate Forums in Europe and Africa. Associate Forums consist of site leadership and representatives elected by workplace employees, who meet regularly to share information, feedback, and ideas. This gives associates and leaders at the site an opportunity to consult directly on key decisions that affect the site or associate experience, including working practices, shift schedules, and associate well-being.
While working, our employees should always act lawfully, ethically, and in the best interests of Amazon.
Our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics (Code of Conduct) sets out basic guiding principles for all employees. Employees may raise questions or report suspected violations of our Code of Conduct through Amazon’s Ethics Line, by phone, or online.
The Ethics Line is a commonly utilized method for employees to raise concerns. Reports to the Ethics Line are answered by an independent third party and may be made anonymously on request. Our Business Conduct and Ethics team records, reviews, investigates (or directs others to investigate), and reports alleged violations of the Code of Conduct, tracking any remediation required.
We respect freedom of association and our employees’ right to join, form, or not join a labor union or other lawful organization of their own selection, without fear of reprisal, intimidation, or harassment.
These rights should be exercised in an informed and thoughtful manner. Amazon has a variety of elected associate forums and work councils around the world, and we have associates represented by some form of collective bargaining in many countries.
We value worker feedback, and are committed to providing our employees with grievance mechanisms and remedial action, regardless of collective bargaining presence. We firmly believe that it is in the best interests of our employees and our company to continue our direct communications, and that the best way to effect positive change is for our employees and managers to continue working together directly. We work hard to listen to our employees, make continual improvements, and invest heavily to offer competitive pay and benefits in a safe and inclusive workplace.
