Job Design

Amazon’s Job Design:

• Not much job rotation, employees standing in the same position, doing the same work for hours on end

• Task significance is low, according to the article by Christopher Mims, “mind-numbingly boring work”

• Amazon managers were very generous and invested in helping all teams of the operation improve, there was no hovering over employees to make sure the job was being done right

• Managers used motivation tactics like holding meeting twice a shift to tell each group of workers how they were doing 

• Amazon implemented job simplification by adding new technology to multiple different areas of their fulfillment operations, for example, robots that would move boxes to different areas of a warehouse

• During the pandemic, the article “The Amazon That Customers Don’t See”, states that Jeff Bezos pioneered new ways of mass-managing people through technology, relying on a maze of systems that minimized human contact to grow unconstrained.

Impact:

• Many employees did not last long because of the lack of task variety and the long hours working in the same position

• Injury and safety rates are lowered because of the implementation of technology that stopped workers from doing strenuous tasks, like lifting and carrying large boxes

• Implementing such technology means a faster and larger production rate, which in return means more employees needed