Amazon Fulfilment Services delivers great careers
Credit to Author: Joshua Walters| Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 18:58:56 +0000
One of the miracles of the modern world is the ability to shop online and have whatever you order delivered to you in as little as a day. Making that all happen for Amazon Canada in B.C. is the job of the employees at its subsidiary Amazon Canada Fulfilment Services, ULC, the warehouses from which the products are shipped to customers.
Among the draws of working for a company that is growing as quickly as Amazon Canada are the opportunities. Vibhore Arora is with Fulfilment Services in New Westminster —– one of three such centres in the province. He joined Amazon after graduating from business school as part of the company’s leadership program in operations “Pathways” almost eight years ago. Through that time his role has changed every 18 months and he is currently responsible for building Amazon’s operations in Canada.
“There are opportunities for upward movement, for lateral movement, for cross-functional movement, from operations into other functions,” says Arora, currently director of regional operations. And as Amazon is a global company, those opportunities extend to jobs in other parts of the world.
The company’s Career Choice program enables employees to build skills needed to pursue their interests, with up to 95 per cent of tuition and associated fees for relevant courses covered.
“We want our employees to be developing and growing within the organization,” says Sonia Huang, a human resources business partner in the Delta-based Fulfilment Services. “Once they graduate from the program, they have the option of pursuing a career in their field of study. This helps increase the overall employability of the general workforce.”
Despite the fact that Amazon continues to grow exponentially, there is an open-door policy that allows for employees even in the earliest stages of their careers to reach out to senior executives. On the flip side, senior staff encourage feedback of any kind in various ways. “We want to make sure that we’re actively seeking feedback from our employees and are working towards creating a safe and positive work environment for them,” says Arora.
The company’s commitment to quick action in relation to its employees resonates through its business practices as well —– one of the things that attracted Huang to Amazon. While change can take a long time to implement in other corporations, Amazon’s “bias for action” leadership principle embraces calculated risk-taking.
“If there is a change that makes sense and benefits our customers, we act swiftly,” says Huang. “And that’s really important because sometimes if you take too long, you miss a golden opportunity to make an impact.”
This story was produced by Mediacorp in partnership with Postmedia, on behalf of Amazon Canada Fulfilment Services.