Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek
By Karen Turner August 26 at 11:56 AM
Amazon.com will soon launch a program to experiment with
a 30-hour workweek for select employees.
The program will have a few technical teams made up
entirely of part-time workers. These 30-hour employees will be salaried and
receive the same benefits as traditional 40-hour workers, but they will receive
only 75 percent of the pay full-time workers earn. Currently, the company
employs part-time workers that share the same benefits as full-time workers.
However, the pilot program would differ in that an entire team, including
managers, would work reduced hours.
Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The
Washington Post.
"We want to create a work environment that is
tailored to a reduced schedule and still fosters success and career
growth," states a posting by the company on Eventbrite.com for an
informational seminar. "This initiative was created with Amazon's diverse
workforce in mind and the realization that the traditional full-time schedule
may not be a 'one size fits all' model."
Currently, the pilot program will be small, consisting of
a few dozen people. These teams will work on tech products within the human
resources division of the company, working Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m.
to 2 p.m., with additional flex hours. Their salaries will be lower than
40-hour workers, but they will have the option to transition to full-time if
they choose. Team members will be hired from inside and outside the company.
Amazon does not have plans to alter the 40-hour workweek on a companywide
level, the spokesman said.
The announcement comes a year after the company faced
criticism after a New York Times report described Amazon as a company that
encouraged employees to work upward of 80 hours a week while rarely taking
vacation. Amazon senior vice president Jay Carney published a response letter
on Medium saying that the story “misrepresented” the company and offering
Amazon's perspective.
Amazon did not comment on whether this program was in
relation to the New York Times report.
The article "was a huge blow, from an employer
attractiveness point of view," said Rita McGrath, a professor at Columbia
Business School who focuses on strategy and innovation. Piloting reduced hours
could be the company's latest experiment with ways to attract top talent, she
said. "Amazon is constantly pushing and trying new things as a company.
They fail a lot, but it's worth it to stay innovative."
Many companies, such as Deloitte and KPMG, offer four-day
workweeks with flex hours but stick to the standard 40-hour expectation.
"A lot of companies have talked about wanting to lower hours but don't
seem to actually go about doing it," said Ellen Galinsky, president and
founder of the Families and Work Institute.
Galinsky hopes that a company as big as Amazon, if it
successfully rolls out the program, can help break the taboo associated with
reduced hours. "There has for a very long time been a stigma against
working reduced hours, or part-time work," she said. "Even names like
that, 'part-time' or 'reduced,' make it seem like a deviation from the norm,
like you're doing less."
The program could also help to improve Amazon's
diversity, said McGrath. Along with other top tech firms, Amazon has not
balanced its female-to-male worker ratio, especially in areas of leadership,
where men make up 76 percent of management positions across the company
globally. A 30-hour workweek could help encourage more female workers, who tend
to take on more household and child-care responsibilities than men in the
domestic sphere.
Amazon did not comment on whether the program is an
attempt to diversify its staff. But McGrath points out that wanting diverse
employees has pragmatic advantages. "Amazon isn't very good at promoting
and keeping women, and the irony is that Amazon's customer base is very
diverse," said McGrath. "So you have this kind of deaf ear in tech to
this vital group of customers."
"It offers an opportunity to tap into people that
you wouldn’t normally because of the way you structure your workweek," she
said.
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