Overview of Amazon Company
Amazon.com, Inc. is an international technology company that provides digital streaming, e-commerce, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence services. The company operates in over 100 countries and has been termed one of the most economically influential forces (Amazon, 2018). The founders of this multi-scale firm were Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott, and its CEO is currently Jeff Bezos. The company has employed many workers globally and values human resources as a powerful tool necessary for the company’s success. The firm requires the employees to be recruited through well-planned and globally accepted methods. The company delivers goods globally through transportation services such as cargo airlines, drone delivery, and other transport means (Amazon, 2018). The company decided to open a manufacturing unit in the UAE with an operational staff of 50 employees. Still, it targeted to employ 1000 employees in various posts during its first year of operation. The expansion was expected in the second year’s process, but it depended on the first year’s performance. This report will discuss implementing Human Resource Management (HRM) practices in the newly opened Amazon Company in UAE.
HRM Practices at Amazon Internationally
Proper HRM practices are crucial for the success and stability of any company. These HRM practices include recruiting, creating an appropriate working environment, onboarding process, compensation and benefits, access to knowledge and tools, employee retention, and professional skill development (Harney and Dundon, 2020). Amazon incorporates most of these practices to operate in the competitive market effectively. In the company, recruitment is the first procedure, and it creates the employer-employee relationship within the organization. In addition to the minimum wage, the organization’s full-time workers benefit, including a healthcare plan.
Amazon company clearly understands that finding a favorable working environment is crucial for retaining employees. It has a self-guided onboarding process, where the company conducts the exercise before the employee joins on the first day (Harney and Dundon, 2020). The favorable working environment created increases employee retention within the organization. These workers concentrate on performing their work in the production of goods and services. The company also has a strong preference for performance management, and one system for ensuring this is documentation. It trusts in one-on-one personal interaction in measuring the employees’ performance. The company also offers professional skills development through onsite training and development programs.
Purpose and Functions of HRM
HRM entails the management process of the employees to effectively attain the organization’s goals within the set time limit. It includes several functions, such as hiring, employee motivation, training, and staffing (Ahammad, 2017). The purpose of HRM in employee planning is to maintain the enhanced morale of the Amazon company members. HR executives have the role of ensuring the workforce is motivated by organizing the firm to offer benefits and rewards to the labor force. The second purpose is to arrange and maintain enough staffing inventory. The goal of the HR manager is to provide the right personnel is available for the proper job designation.
The functions of HRM are divided into operative and managerial parts. The administrative functions of the HR in the Amazon company are to ensure organization, adequate staffing, and directing the organization’s operational activities. The HR managers and their assistants have a vital part in determining the firms’ success (Ahammad, 2017). The operative function of the HR managers is to ensure employee motivation to ensure high workforce retention and reduce their turnover. Motivated workers within the new branch of Amazon Company will effectively cooperate to enhance the organization’s success.
Internal and External of Approaches to Recruitment
The two approaches considered in recruitment and selection are internal and external, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. The internal approach encompasses the promotion, transfer, and reference of existing employees (Abdalla et al., 2021). The external process entails sourcing employees outside the organization through advertisements or agencies. The greatest strength of internal recruitment is that it is a quick way of sourcing workers as they can be promoted or transferred from one department to another. The HR has a background knowledge of the employees within the organization. The organization thus avoids advertisement and training costs, as the workers have worked in the enterprise before. This approach discourages diversity as there are limited applicants and no new employees, skills, and innovative ideas are brought in.
External recruitment sources encourage diversity as the recruits bring different skills and innovative ideas. Many applicants apply for the position, and thus the HR and selection committee have a wider range of choices (Abdalla et al., 2021). However, the process consumes many resources such as time and money. Finances are required to advertise the vacant posts and conduct interviews. The candidates may also provide false information to the interview panel as they may not have the applicant’s comprehensive background knowledge.
Benefits of Different HRM Practices Within an Organisation
Different HRM practices such as training, selection and recruitment, and reward systems benefit both employees and employers. Training helps workers enhance their competencies and knowledge to handle the challenges encountered effectively (Manzoor et al., 2019). The workers become flexible and can perform different tasks within the organization. Job flexibility has advantages for the worker and the employee. The employees attain work and life balance, which increases their satisfaction in the workplace. An organization that encourages job flexibility will probably attract more workers. Technological advances such as telecommuting can increase work flexibility as employees can work from home and thus find more time to socialize with the family. Through training, the employer finds competent workers and thus generates enormous profits for the organization’s growth through improved performance. Two workers should perform the tasks that have job twinnings to avoid overwhelming a worker if he completes it alone.
Different approaches to recruitment have their advantages and disadvantages to the organization. External recruitment benefits the new employee by showcasing their techniques and knowledge for organizational development (Al-Kassem, 2017). Internal recruitment helps the existing workers be transferred and promoted to better positions in the corporation. External recruitment benefits the employers as they get new innovative skills and knowledge. Internal recruitment creates a solid employee-employer relationship within the company (Al-Kassem, 2017). In a good employee relationship, the workers quickly adopt the delegated tasks. The employees receiving rewards from the company will be motivated and work harder. This hardworking will help improve their skills and knowledge for better professionalism. These motivated workers thus optimally perform their work, drawing enormous profits for the employers. The organization thus easily achieves success through the enhanced efforts of these motivated employees.
Effectiveness of Different HRM Practices for Profit and Productivity
HRM practices should help enhance productivity and profitability within the organization. Amazon can effectively use HRM practices to assure the company’s growth through increased productivity and profits. Organizations must know that labor is a significant driving force behind the organization’s success. HR practices encompasing employer retention, learning, and skills development, recruiting, rewards, performance management, and appraisal rewards have a positiveinfluenceto the company (Torrington et al., 2020). The recruitment and selection process brings the most eligible candidates to the organization, thus improving the profit margins of the organizations through actively performing the recruits. An HR manager should ensure equity among workers to develop a good relationship (Kodelja, 2016). Thus, employees embrace a fair working environment when HR manager embraces equity.
The rewards system effectively keeps the employees motivated, and therefore they work hard to bring high profits to the organization so that they can even be rewarded more. The overall organization performance is improved as the workers are inspired to work for the company (Torrington et al., 2020). A better onboarding process ensures the employees are equipped with the proper training, and thus they effectively perform their work to provide enhanced productivity. It also ensures a solid organizational positive culture as the employees understand the firm’s demands early. The workers thus comply with the company’s goals, increasing profit margins. The motivated workers will also show a high willingness to work for the Amazon company, thus increasing the employee retention rate. It reduces the costs incurred by the firm is trying to look for the replacement of the turnover workers (Nel et al., 2017). The financial costs in replacing the workers also reduce the profit margins that the organization makes. The firm can also set the Key Performance Index (KPI) that helps align the workers’ performance to profit-making in the company. The HR manager is responsible for ensuring these HRM practices are performed.
Functions of HRM Providing Appropriate Talent and Skills
Various functions of the HRM are crucial in providing the essential talents and skills needed to attain the organization’s objectives. The HR manager has the role of supporting Amazon Company to achieve different types and specific numbers of employees to meet the strategic and operational goals of the Amazon company. Job analysis by HR must ensure that the proper individuals are assigned to the correct work. They need to provide a conducive environment for the workers to utilize their talent and skills (Safa et al., 2017). The HR manager needs to assist Amazon’s workers in maintaining performance standards, such as through performance feedback, to develop their skills. Organizations’ top priority must ensure the keeping of top talents as they market the organization in the competitive field. These higher talent profiles ensure client satisfaction, which is crucial to drawing many customers to the firm.
There should be the maintenance of proper employee-employer relationships to give the workers the free chance to develop their talent and skills. The HR manager needs to ensure the safety of the work environment and maintain a healthy environment for the workers to improve their skills. Motivation can also enhance talent and skill advancement through incentives and rewards (Safa et al., 2017). A healthy work environment reduces costs by reducing medical claims, turnover, and workers’ compensation. The employees become happier and thus take calculated risks essential for the organization’s prosperity. The inspiration of the workers helps the company produce high-quality goods as their abilities are enhanced. The HR manager has a role in assessing the various HRM practices to find areas that significantly improve workers’ talents and skills. These attributes contribute to good employee relations, which minimizes conflicts within the organization.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Approaches to Recruitment and Selection
The different approaches to recruitment and selection approaches have their limitations and advantages. In the external method, the workers recruited into the Amazon Company are new to the organization’s culture, systems, and procedures. These unfamiliarities may make the worker not effectively fit within the company (Mathis et al., 2019). Some of the employees externally sourced may not have experience and thus may show incompetence in work performance. Recruiting process of the external workers is expensive because of the advertisement and interview costs. However, the method brings new skills and innovation to Amazon and thus increases the organization’s productivity and profit margins.
The internal approach may create confidence problems in the employees selected for the position because they may be unfamiliar with the new post. Biasness may also prevail in the promotion and transfer of workers. The main strength is that the internal approach is more manageable for Amazon’s HR manager to appoint the existing workers to new positions because they are familiar with the labor force that exists in the organization. The selected individuals can easily fit in the company as they have had working experiences.
Exploration of Methods used in HRM practices
Amazon Company works hard to improve the worker’s confidence and commitment to the firm. If a company wants to reduce turnover, proper HRM practices must be done. The methods include work standards determination, job analysis, workday task analysis, planning and putting work promotions, extrapolation, and instantaneous observation (Torrington et al., 2020). Extrapolation entails using mathematical extensions of past data to make future HRM projections. The Amazon Company can estimate human resources’ current and future demands through this method. Workday task analysis considers the assessment of the elements such as duration, speed, and mental activity status during the performance of a task. It makes the company know how many more workers are required to ensure efficient operations within the firm. Amazon’s HRM must understand the employees’ career desires and abilities in structuring and putting work promotions. A job analysis enables Amazon’s HRM to identify the duties and specifications for a particular job, thus employing the workers in their correct fields. In instantaneous observation, the HRM makes on-spot-check workers’ performance and makes judgments according to their performance.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Recruitment and Selection Approaches
One approach valued by the Amazon Company is sourcing external employees. HRM department conducts interviews to source new skills and innovation into the organization. Amazon Company interviews applicants to get the best candidates for posts such as eCommerce marketing specialists, software engineers, and warehouse workers, among other careers. The method’s advantage is that it encourages diversification by bringing new minds into the organization (Mathis et al., 2019). Fresh ideas are brought into the company, producing more unique goods brands. However, the company incurs advertising costs, and it is time-consuming finding the right applicants suitable for the posts. New employees may not perfectly fit into the position appointed to serve as they may have given false information in the interview.
The Amazon Company’s HR manager may also transfer or promote workers. It saves the firm the advertisement costs, and the HR manager has background knowledge of the workers that should be promoted or transferred. It helps shorten the onboarding time that the organization takes in training the recruits (Nel et al., 2017). However, the method may bring bias, as some HR managers may transfer their preferred workers who may not have the necessary qualifications. There are also limited options that the HRM team can choose during the promotion or transfer. It also leaves a gap in the existing workforce if the promoted or transferred worker is not externally replaced.
Critical Evaluation of HRM Practices and Application Within Amazon Company
In HRM, the reward and incentive system is one of the most effective HRM practices of retaining and motivating the Amazon Company’s staff. The reward system should include bonuses, other financial incentives and consider the salary structure and recognition (Mathis et al., 2019). Monetary compensation has also proven to be one of the most effective ways to enhance workers’ motivations to improve productivity. Therefore, the Amazon Company, by ensuring an operation reward system exists, the employee and overall organization’s productivity will be enhanced. It will lead to higher net profits and early attainment of its goals.
Training of the Amazon Company’s workers may seem to have a higher expenditure effect, but it helps the organization maximize profits in the long run. Trained workers make fewer errors, and thus the firm incurs fewer losses in its operations (Mathis et al., 2019). Workers’ skills and knowledge are improved through training, and thus making them competent for even higher positions within the Amazon Companies. Training diversifies skills, and innovative ideas can be generated through the process. It is achieved through two methods: on-the-job training and off-job training.
Well-trained workers will show improved quality and quantity in their performance. It helps in accident reduction in the workplace, and thus the organization saves on costs that would have been used in catering for injuries gained at the workplace. Therefore, the company can save the cash incurred by looking for competent professionals within specified positions. The finances saved after training helps to maximize the net profits generated by Amazon Company. The worker’s morale improves when an organization invests in employee training. Organizations must invest to ensure that their workers give a peak performance. Trained employees require little supervision, thus saving the HR time.
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