Amazon's Reversal

Years ago, I recall scouring the Internet to see what employees were saying about Amazon. I was curious about their image and reputation from those who knew best, employees. I was taken aback by the ugly responses and they were not in short supply. At the time, I thought to myself….here is just another example of a very successful company where no one cares about the internal culture and guess what, this disconnect is not denting its reputation. I’d seen plenty of that over the years. Knowing how important reputation is to a company and especially over the long-term (BTW…a big focus of former CEO Jeff Bezos), I questioned myself as to the meaning of reputation when a company could have a strong external reputation based on extraordinary customer service and a weaker one based on employee satisfaction.

This week I read Jeff Bezos’ last Letter to Shareholders. A new CEO has been named and Bezos is moving on to the Executive Chairman of the Board. In his Letter, Bezos addresses the reputation issue through a focus on the company’s employees around the world. He says: “Despite what we’ve accomplished, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for our employees’ success. 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.” As I have said before, reputation is the heartbeat of an organization and Amazon is following the mantra, Cure Thyself.

Do I believe that this will happen? Yes. I think that when Amazon puts its mind to it, most anything can happen. Is it overdue? Yes, it’s about time but why not now than never. Will Bezos play a role in making this happen? Absolutely. He says, “I’m excited to work alongside the large team of passionate people we have in Ops and help invent in this arena of Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”

I do not doubt that they will come up with a whole new way of building an employee-centric work place that others envy. What is Amazon thinking of doing? “If we want to be Earth’s Best Employer, we shouldn’t settle for 94% of employees saying they would recommend Amazon to a friend as a place to work. We have to aim for 100%. And we’ll do that by continuing to lead on wages, on benefits, on upskilling opportunities, and in other ways that we will figure out over time.” Reaching a 100% employee recommendation metric is a high bar with no room for error. Amazon has its work cut out for itself but I am confident that they will achieve their goal and teach us a thing or two along the way.

PS. The Letter runs about 27 pages after I copied and pasted it. When I single spaced it at Arial 10 font pitch, I got to 9 pages. Bezos is well known for demanding that executives put their thoughts into six-page narrative memos. No power points allowed. He overreached in this year’s Letter to Shareholders. 2020 gives us all a little leeway.