Yesterday, Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) revealed its intentions to retrain one-third of its U.S. staff— or 100,000 employees — by 2025 to assist the transition into more sophisticated tasks or seek better opportunities. The scheduled program is one of the largest corporate retraining efforts ever unveiled, costing approximately $7,000 per employee, or $700 million in total.
Since the beginning of 2019, Amazon shares have gained roughly 34%. The stock ended Thursday’s trading session at $2,001.07, down $16.34 or 0.81% from the prior close.
Leading retailers such as Walmart and Target have been raising wages while strengthening training to attract more skilled staff and make the shopping experience less strenuous. While there are few chances of meeting an Amazon employee face-to-face, the enterprise believes that it can enhance the online shopping experience with technically more competent employees.
For a while now, Amazon.com has been in the line of fire of unions and certain legislators, including presidential contestants, for what they consider to be the below-par working environment. Offering an opportunity for limited-skilled employees to progress within or outside the organization could radically change Amazon’s history.
To put an end to the discussed concerns, the Seattle Corporation plans to expand its current mentoring programs and adopt fresh ideas. The offered training is not compulsory, and a majority of these programs will be provided free of charge.
Amazon’s retraining programs include:
- Amazon Technical Academy – imparts non-technical staff with appropriate skills to move into software engineering professions.
- Associate2Tech – prepares fulfillment center staff to switch over to technical jobs.
- Machine Learning University – teaches machine learning skills to staff with a technical background.
- Amazon Career Choice – a prepaid training program intended to coach fulfillment center employees in high-demand professions of their preference.
- Amazon Apprenticeship – a Department of Labor accredited program that offers paid rigorous classroom coaching and internships with Amazon.
- AWS Training and Certification – provide workers with courses to improve usable AWS Cloud knowledge.
Regarding the benefits of the training program, Amazon said that it assists workers to “move into highly skilled technical and non-technical roles across the company’s corporate offices, tech hubs, fulfillment centers, retail stores, and transportation network, or pursue career paths outside of Amazon.”
Amazon and other corporations have been struggling to identify skilled American staff. On Thursday, the retail and tech conglomerate estimates the US employee count to reach 300,000 this year. Currently, the company has a workforce of over 630,000 globally.
Based on its own recruitment history, Amazon has pointed out that roles such as data mapping, data science, safety engineering, and business analysis have been in great demand over the past five years. There is also a huge shortage of workers with expertise in logistics and transportation.
More sophisticated training for employees working in Amazon warehouses is taking place in a progressively dynamic environment with the US unemployment fluctuating below 4%.
Commenting on the training program, Beth Galetti, a senior vice president of human resources at Amazon, said: “While many of our employees want to build their careers here, for others, it might be a stepping stone to different aspirations. We think it’s important to invest in our employees and to help them gain new skills and create more professional options for themselves. With this pledge, we’re committing to support 100,000 Amazonians in getting the skills to take the next step in their careers.”
The market is expected to have a neutral stand on the news. Technically, the stock is trading in a range of between 1,500 and 2,000. Furthermore, the MACD indicator is forming a bearish divergence with the price. As a result, we can expect the stock to move down in the short-term.
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