Prohibiting Sexual Harassment at Work

Amazon to pay full college tuition for front-line employees

Amazon’s more than 750,000 operations employees in the U.S. are eligible for fully funded college tuition, including cost of classes, books, and fees.

Amazon plans to expand the education and skills training benefits it offers to its U.S. employees with a total investment of $1.2 billion by 2025. Through its popular Career Choice program, the company will fund full college tuition, as well as high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency certifications for its front-line employees—including those who have been at the company for as little as three months. Amazon is also adding three new education programs to provide employees with the opportunity to learn skills within data center maintenance and technology, IT, and user experience and research design.

“Amazon is now the largest job creator in the U.S., and we know that investing in free skills training for our teams can have a huge impact for hundreds of thousands of families across the country,” said Dave Clark, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon. “We launched Career Choice almost 10 years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study.

“This new investment builds on years of experience supporting employees in growing their careers, including some unique initiatives like building more than 110 on-site classrooms for our employees in Amazon fulfillment centers across 37 states. Today, over 50,000 Amazon employees around the world have already participated in Career Choice and we’ve seen first-hand how it can transform their

Starting in January, Amazon front-line employees will have access to even more education benefits through Career Choice:

• Funding for college tuition. More than 750,000 operations employees across the U.S. will be eligible to have their full college tuition paid for at hundreds of education partners across the country. In addition to funding associate and bachelor’s degrees, Amazon’s Career Choice will also fund high school completion, GEDs, and ESL proficiency certifications.
• Pre-paid fees. Amazon will pay employees’ tuition and fees in advance rather than offering reimbursement after coursework completion, ensuring employees don’t need existing funds to start accessing the education options they want.
• Limitless learning. Amazon front-line employees will have access to annual funds for education as long as they remain at the company, with no limit to the number of years they can benefit.
• Fast starts. All 750,000 U.S. hourly employees are eligible to participate in Career Choice 90 days after starting at Amazon. This makes all 400,000 employees who joined the company since the start of the pandemic eligible to access Amazon-funded education opportunities.

“I worked in a warehouse setting for years but knew I wanted to help people and had been curious about healthcare. In just nine months, I became a certified clinical medical assistant while working at Amazon in Tracy, California, thanks to Career Choice,” said former Amazon operations employee and Career Choice graduate Patricia Soto. “A career in healthcare would have been difficult to obtain without tuition support from Amazon and an internship opportunity to apply my new skills.”

Additional new skills training programs

In addition to the expanded Career Choice benefits, Amazon is also launching three new upskilling programs—all tuition-free for participants—to provide even more career advancement opportunities for its employees:

AWS Grow Our Own Talent

AWS Grow Our Own Talent offers on-the-job training and job placement opportunities to Amazon employees and entry-level candidates with nontraditional backgrounds. The training will help them pursue roles to innovate within Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers and safely deliver high-quality cloud computing services to customers. Participating employees are hired into roles like data center technicians and operations technicians, and complete in-person, on-the-job training for up to six months.

Surge2IT is designed to help entry-level IT employees across Amazon’s operations network pursue careers in higher-paying technical roles through self-paced learning resources. The course helps employees develop the skills necessary to advance their career in the IT field, such as supporting the Amazon Robotics picking and stowing technology. Participants who complete the course and move up at Amazon can make an additional $10,000 a year.

The User Experience Design and Research (UXDR) Apprenticeship

The UXDR Apprenticeship program combines instructor-led training and real-world experience in a one-year program that offers employees the opportunity to learn and develop skills in research and design on teams across Amazon, including Prime Video, Alexa, AWS, and Amazon Fashion. Graduates are ready for jobs that help improve the experience of Amazon customers, from making payments easier on Amazon sites to designing features that make devices more accessible.

“Today, there are not enough workers to fill every open job in the United States, which means that businesses are struggling to hire—especially for roles that require specific or technical skill sets,” said Cheryl Oldham, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation senior vice president. “When large employers like Amazon commit to investing in their people through upskilling programs, especially in technical fields, it helps to ensure that the business community has access to a workforce pipeline that meets their needs today and in the future. At the Chamber Foundation, we work with employers across the country to pursue solutions that ensure American workers have the right skills to best support and grow our economy and we applaud Amazon for the investment they’re making in the workforce.”

Upskilling 2025

Two years ago, Amazon announced Upskilling 2025, a $700 million commitment to train 100,000 U.S. employees by 2025 to help them transition into in-demand, higher-paying jobs. Since the launch of Upskilling 2025 in 2019, more than 70,000 employees have participated in one of Amazon’s nine upskilling programs. With today’s additional investment and expanded education benefits for employees, the company is more than tripling its original pledge—with plans to invest $1.2 billion in these programs and provide free skills training to 300,000 employees over the next four years, the equivalent of more than 30% of the company’s current workforce in the U.S.

The American Upskilling Study

A joint survey from Gallup and Amazon found that employer-provided upskilling offers ways to solve recruitment challenges, increase productivity, and raise wages.

Amazon has seen a surge in applications to participate in education programs since the start of the pandemic, reflecting increased interest from employees to fortify their skillsets. Amazon Technical Academy, an upskilling program that helps Amazon employees from all backgrounds become software engineers in nine months, received thousands of applications, with interest increasing 460% over the past 18 months. To accommodate a surge in demand, Amazon scaled all of its upskilling programs, adapting to work-from-home schedules, and welcomed more participants by pivoting from in-person to virtual training. In addition to the new and expanded programs outlined above, Amazon employees have free access to the following skills training programs:

Amazon Technical Academy

Amazon Technical Academy trains employees from across the company to become Amazon software engineers. The nine-month-long internal training program does not require a computer science background or a degree. Amazon Technical Academy has placed 98% of its graduates into software development engineer roles within Amazon, with their salary and compensation packages increasing an average of 93% as a result. This year more than 40% of Amazon Technical Academy graduates came from Amazon’s operations network.

The Amazon Technical Apprenticeship

This program creates paths to technical jobs, primarily for veterans and military spouses looking to transition into technical professions. Amazon currently employs over 40,000 U.S. veterans and military spouses across multiple businesses and recently announced plans to hire 100,000 U.S. veterans and military spouses by 2024.

AWS Training and Certifications

The AWS Training and Certifications program offers Amazon employees access to more than 500 free digital courses to build cloud computing knowledge. As part of this program, AWS TechU offers an accelerated 48-week career-development program that blends project-based learning and on-the-job training to help early-career employees in technical fields advance their skills.

Machine Learning University

A state-of-the-art training program curated and delivered by Amazon employees. It helps employees with a background in technology and coding gain graduate-level skills in machine learning and AI to solve customer problems.

The Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship

Program participants learn the skills and technical knowledge needed to pursue a technical maintenance role supporting Amazon’s robotics technology. Hundreds of Amazon apprentices have earned nearly 3,000 certifications to date. Upon completion of their apprenticeship, participants could make an additional $16,000 on average each year in their new roles at Amazon.

The American Upskilling Study

Amazon’s new investment in free access to education programs for employees comes as the first-ever Amazon-Gallup American Upskilling Study shows how access to skills training can help companies recruit more workers and help workers build skills for rewarding careers. The analysis found that U.S. workers who completed upskilling programs over the past year have seen an average salary increase of 8.6%—the equivalent of an additional $8,000 in their annual earnings.

The expectation of this salary boost, along with new skills that will help employees move into more technical and resilient industries, have made access to upskilling opportunities one of the most sought-after employee benefits by American workers right now. Currently, 70% of workers interested in upskilling say they would switch to a new job if offered free skills training. For young adults entering the labor market, employer-funded upskilling is more important than paid vacation time.

Is the 4 Day Work Week a Good Idea?

Amid alarming levels of employee stress and burnout, some organizations are considering what might have been unthinkable to many a few years ago: reducing the work week to four days.

It’s a controversial idea — but is it a good one? Or are there better ways to promote worker productivity and wellbeing?

Some studies support reducing the number of hours worked each week. An experiment conducted in Iceland between 2015 and 2019 found that doing so while keeping pay the same increased productivity.

Researchers also reported lower burnout and higher wellbeing among employees with a four day work week.

A similar work model — a four day work week trial — is being tested in Spain. In Japan, employers are urged to permit their employees to work four 10-hour days. And Scotland recently announced a policy to cut working hours by 20% without a decrease in pay.

Organisations are running their own experiments, as well. A New Zealand company reduced weekly hours from 37.5 to 30 — and allowed employees to decide what days they would work. Another organisation gave employees every other Friday off each month; according to the CEO, some workers enjoy using that day for individual “deep work,” undistracted by meetings or calls.

What’s more, leaders all over the world are considering more permanent flexibility with remote or hybrid work arrangements based on what they learned from the largest “forced work experiment” in history during COVID19.

The Complex Relationships Among Time, Work and Wellbeing

In March 2020, during the onset of COVID-19 in the U.S., Gallup asked 10,364 full-time employees the number of days they typically work. Just 5% said they work four days a week, while 84% said five days and 11% said six days.

Gallup also collected employee engagement and wellbeing data. Those working six days per week indicated the highest rates of burnout — 38% reported feeling burned out “often” or “always.” Among those working five days per week, 26% reported feeling burned out often or always, compared with 23% of those with four day work weeks.

In addition, those working four day weeks were found to have the highest rates of thriving wellbeing (63%), compared with those working five (57%) or six days (56%)

Moving from working five days a week to working four could increase an organisation’s percentage of actively disengaged employees.

In other words, by working fewer days per week, employees who already feel disconnected from their employer, team or manager are more likely to drift even farther away — from tolerating their jobs to hating them.

The Problem Isn’t the Number of Workdays — It’s the Workplace

Debates over changing up the work week aren’t new. In 1926, Ford Motor Company standardised a five day work week from the prevalent six days. Ford’s leaders theorised that fewer days worked with the same pay would increase productivity through higher effort while at work.

But beneath the long-standing debate over the work week lies a deeper question about the nature of work itself. Consider these findings:

• Gallup research has consistently found that workers want more flexibility and that job flexibility is correlated with higher employee engagement. Work flexibility allows employees to boost their overall wellbeing in other areas while still meeting the requirements of their job. It also lowers stress by allowing people to create a schedule that makes sense for their life.
• Two-thirds or more of engaged employees are thriving in their overall lives regardless of days worked per week

Meaningful work is an essential part of a life well-lived. Work can be richly rewarding — and is for many

Flex time is the most desired perk among employees, and with the increase in hybrid work models going forward, it makes more sense to use a flex-time model than to legislate hours or days worked — with an emphasis on upskilling managers to bring role clarity, ongoing coaching and accountability.