AMZN Amazon.com Inc

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)

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