Dhwani Shah

Roll no. 15
M-Com Part 2
Sem-III

HRM policies of AMAZON & MICROSOFT

Introduction
The Human Resource Department of any company is an indispensable and important part of
its overall operational strategy. It has the potential ability of directly impacting the results in
outcomes of the company and can also make a significant difference between the failure and
success of the organisational strategies are the objectives of an organisation, both in the short
as well as long term. Efficient Human Resource Department should have the ability of
accessing, forecasting, predicting, designing and implementing its strategies directly in sync
with the objectives and strategies of the business of the company. Human Resource
Department can also help in significant and accurate forecasting as well scanning of the
environment and utilise its resources and knowledge for setting near-exhausting scenarios for
the company.

AMAZON
The company, which was primarily a bookseller, has established itself in nearly every
industry. Amazon is one of the leading retail companies of the world which educates, inspires
and informs its customers regarding the products and services which sells for various
different companies. The company has established various stores across the world in the
biggest countries like Germany, United States of America, Canada, Japan and France. The
ability of operating virtually provides the company with the opportunity of offering a wide
range of products and services including music titles as well as books. Amazon is known for
selling almost every kind of consumer product ranging from clothes, fashion products, shoes,
bags, accessories, jewelleries, electronics, toys, home decor, etc. The organization allows its
clients for doing product listing on its website. The clients are required for using correct
subject information and title concerned with the relevant product. Then, the outcomes of the
subject information in this human resource management in amazon company are posted on
the basis of availability and popularity.
In recent years, many e-commerce companies have fallen, and Amazon has stood out to
create exciting e-commerce performance. It’s amazing growth rate is attributed to the unique
management of Amazon’s president, Jeff Bezos. The biggest reason for his success was that
he found the most essential and immediate needs of people: they wanted more choices, but
they also demanded more convenient, fast and cheap ways to shop. Bezos pointed out that
Amazon’s online business model is to provide a link between customers and providers, and to
revolutionize the sales of products. Amazon is known for working with various different
companies, magazines, studios and interest groups in order to ensure that all their products
are available online. The partners of the company are assisted in the promotion and selling of

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their products to the customers. The company packs and dispatches the products on the behalf
of its partners. Besides, Amazon also performs customer service responsibilities as well as
billing duties on the behalf of its business partners, post to which it provides weekly and
monthly reports regarding the same kind of activities. 

Amazon’s success and mission, it can be seen that Amazon’s general strategic goal is to
provide customers with fast and good service. As long as the customer wants to buy
something, it will be available on Amazon’s website.  From the perspective of strategic
human resources concept, the marketing and positioning causes the strategy, and the strategy
of the enterprise causes the required behaviour of the employee and the HR practice.
Therefore, in Amazon, the known factor is that the workers are in harsh environment and
conditions to worker longer times to meet customers’ needs. 
Amazon is can be considered as a high-tech company because the process is based on the
Internet, so according to what Jeff Bezos said, the people involved in this process should be
prepared for the harsh environment and changes. In terms of work and family balance, Jeff
strongly stated that “There is no work and family balance, but the work and balance harmony.
Overall, it is easy to identify the aggressive strategy of Amazon from the required the
worker’s behaviour. On the other hand, the critiques of the Amazon behaviour start to
question whether this company should make more chances in terms of the employees so the
strategic goal can be better met.

Function Of HRM

Amazon understands the significance of having the necessary talent for performing various
responsibilities and duties for the success of the company. Amazon's strategic objectives are
closely aligned to the strategic objectives of the HR by the human resource management
function of the firm. The company believes that employees and workers are one of the
greatest contributing factors towards the success of any organisation. In the case of Amazon,
companies committed towards improving and enhancing it skills of the workforce by the
means of efficient development and training programs. As such, the self-actualization and job
satisfaction of the employees in staff members would be enhanced. It was been discussed in
this human resource management in amazon company primary functions of human resource
at Amazon includes selection and recruitment, training and development, compensation
management, maintenance of good relationship among employees and ensuring legal and
ethical compliance.

These functions help in promoting workplace environment for the employees that is
productive and helps the employees and workers in performing up to their potential. The
human resource functions of the company have held the employees in maintaining good
attitude and moral standards within the company. The purpose of the human resource
management at Amazon is promoting cordial and self-respect working relationships with the
workers and employees. The HR managers of the company work towards the satisfaction of
the individual needs and requirements of all the workers by providing them with a

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coordinating environment. The workplace environment of any business should help in
promoting the group as well as individual performances within the organisation.

a) Recruitment and selection

A set of procedures utilised by the human resource management of an organisation for

managing the workers and obtaining the best potential out of them refers to Workforce
planning.  The primary goal of workforce planning of an organisation is ensuring its success
in the long run and realising maximum amount of profits and revenue from its operations.

The way Amazon recruits and selects is very diverse and very strict, only real talent can be
retained. Jeff knows that absorbing talent is the key to the company’s success. Amazon needs
people who can contribute to ideas, and it does not care about its employees’ past career.
Therefore, Amazon’s employees may include professional athletes and racing enthusiasts, as
well as liberal artists, rock musicians, and scholars from Oxford University who study poetry.
In order to control costs, the company does not adopt traditional interviews or examination
methods when recruiting talents, but reuses the convenience and effectiveness of the network.
“The experiment of Socrates” model Jeff has a unique model for discovering talents. As long
as there is a little dissatisfaction, it will not be hired. Applicant are hired through a layer of
interviews. Furthermore, when a person is hired by Amazon, the criteria of this person is
stricter, which means the requirement increases all the time, and this is the way Jeff keeps all
the candidates to keep having a serious mind.
In terms of the recruitment and selection process, the approaches of the Amazon are very
scientific. In terms of the recruitment process, the required job description and personal traits
are made before any interviews. These strict guidelines push interviewers to follow the needs
instead of having perception errors. There are several time of interviews done by different
people which avoid the self-centred bias, early information bias and stereotypes. Overall, this
process make judgements to be more evidence made. Besides, even though this company care
about people’s past cases, and their past performance, they do not strictly ask people to have
certain past profession past, which allows the diversity.

b) Performance and reward management

Strategies of performance management of the company help in focusing upon alignment of
the performance with the significant objectives and goals. The strategies of performance
management are utilised by Amazon which help in promoting the necessary behaviour within
the workers. The policies of the company are quite flexible and relevant support to the
Employees and workers for enabling them to achieve the objectives and goals of the
organisation.
Amazon’s performance management and compensation management are very strict. From a
performance management perspective, Amazon has strict standards for every employee in the
position. From the daily work to the work content, from the general work outline to the work
practices, Amazon has detailed requirements for every employee. Moreover, performance

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management and compensation management are closely linked. Besides, the critical rules, the
executives of Amazons, from the lower level to high levels, they will have meetings every
year to discuss the employees’ performance. From the annual meetings, they can conclude
how to make improvements on the performance. The company’s organizational structure is
flat, the operation centre calculates wages according to the hour, new employees, product
managers, senior managers, directors, and core leadership teams. Amazon’s promotion is not
easy, but many employees are paid more than the boss Bezos himself.
As it is stated on the official page of Amazon, this company offers flexible shifts to give more
workers; more choices. And if the performance is well enough, the person will be given the
chance of becoming the permanent member of them. Also, the company also offers medical
insurance combined with other types of insurance, the different packages of bonuses, and also
“career choices” funding for the adult education. Also, the reward system if motivated,
because the employee’s performance is tightly connected with their wages, bonus. All of the
initiatives of these can motivate employees and push them to have better performance.
The job situation which Amazon published to the public is positive, but there are ma be much
vulnerability in the management process. Strict working conditions do give employees the
motivation to work hard, but at the same time, a rigid treaty will force many people to leave.
From this perspective, Amazon seems to only care about its own economic interests rather
than the well-being of its employees. Although the employee’s welfare protection is
mentioned in the reward mechanism, as well as other employee development projects, but
these extra projects may not be as important as the daily care of employees in the workplace.

MICROSOFT

Microsoft is known for being one of the ideal places for working. The organization has won
various awards for its commitment towards diversity, flexibility within working arrangements
and innovations. Microsoft has always been a market leader in the context of its revenue. The
company has been able to generate average annual revenue of $15 billion, while having a
total of 80,000 employees in its workforce across the world. Such statistics make the
company one of the biggest and best technology firms of the world. 

It has been inferred in this human resources management in Microsoft employees of the
company have the access to most of the existing resources, from periodical libraries, to
source code libraries and intranet to research laboratories. The work of the manpower of
Microsoft is considered to be on technology’s cutting-edge and personally challenging.
According to the belief of the company, the employees are provided with whatever
technologies and tools they require for the achievement of the best possible outcomes; and
the employees of the company are expected for creating entertainment and software products
which can potentially be sold for millions of copies across the globe. At most of the locations,
the office campuses of the company are known for being the benchmark of technological
hubs, with forested trails, fir trees, basketball courts, shuttle buses, and even snow-capped
mountain vistas for the employees to use.

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It is observed in this human resources management in Microsoft primary recognition of the
employees of Microsoft is known as an intellectual fuel and the workers are provided with
numerous beneficial resources and plans. Such aspects have been designed for retaining the
employees. The Chief of Human Resource of the organization, who joined in 2005, began
reshaping the HR strategies of the company for making their more customized and innovative
for individual employee requirements. As a Human Resource perspective, the primary
emphasis was project the company as one that is driven by its employees. As a business
organization, the company offers a high amount of flexibility to its employees and workers in
the form of flexible benefit plans and flexible working arrangements. These practices of the
company have widely been considered as one of the best employer and HR practices by
companies and employers. 

Human resource strategy

According to this human resources management in Microsoft performance cultural model has
been adopted by the Microsoft Corporation as the best approach for driving its success. All
the important human metrics have been measured and categorised in accordance with the
growth pyramid. The amount of investment made by the company in the internal and external
surveys is quite substantial can put raise the company in the form of a leader in this context
across the whole industry. In the contemporary times of organisational restructuring and
reception, human resource is expected by businesses for understanding and manpower needs
of the organisation, helping in the development of strategic plans in the context of the
employees, identification of issues and problems related to talent before the business of the
organisation is impacted by them and very importantly, identification of new and emerging
business strategies. At the Microsoft Corporation, the Human Resource Department is made
responsible and accountable for the maximization of the value of its manpower asset for
driving the success of the organisation. The core functions of human resource managers, and
the practices and procedures of the same have been divided among the structures of the
vertical tower for making sure that the flow of information is easier and transparent. The
functions which irrelevantly independent also help the business needs of Microsoft to be
more closely measured and aligned from the perspective of a functional unit. The
management of Microsoft often refers its organizational cultural as facilitative. The company
has made significant amount of investment towards the development of its workers and
employees and provides high amount of support for the optimum career growth of its
workforce.

Recruitment and selection

Recruitment policy of Microsoft is dependent upon its belief of hiring the right people greater
important than hiring only for filling job positions. As the company expanded, entertaining its
old and basic principles however had to bring a few changes in its methods when the number
of employees required within the organisation could not be source from colleges and
universities only. Practices of recruitment of the company continue to remain active instead
of being passive. The company believes in head hunting the best level of staff. More than 300

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recruiting experts help in finding, monitoring and recruiting search staff from other
organisations. The right type of people is preferred over the right type of level of skill during
recruitment of employees within the company.

Employee satisfaction
Microsoft attempts at catering the requirements of its workers and employees by recognising
the fact that majority of them are comprised of fresh college graduates. This is the reason
why Microsoft sets up its offices in the form of campuses instead of just parking space and
work space. The environment that is provided by Microsoft includes every individual
employee having the freedom of decorating their workspace according to their will.
Microsoft has been providing its employees with employee satisfaction by the means of
giving them the opportunity for development and growth. Employee satisfaction as afforded
by the company by the means of encouragement of horizontal transfers and encouragement of
the employees for developing themselves by changing jobs. The top level management of the
company is required for coaching the lower level of management and helping them in their
development and learning. Such practices have been designed by the company for increasing
the satisfaction and commitment of the employees towards the company, while maintaining
the same level of spirit which was present when the organisation was born. Three aspects of
tasks which impact the level of job satisfaction of an organisation are the tasks perceived
value, physical strain degree and job complexity. Such aspects are managed by Microsoft by
making sure that the perceived value of the tasks remains high and by providing high
complexity to the high achievers. The communication of such high value takes place within
the organisation by the means of culture which has been maintained by the company since a
very long time.

Conclusion
It can be concluded from the human resources management in Microsoft and amazon human
resource management that an efficient human resource department not only acts in the form
of a business partner to the company, but also assists in the shaping of the overall business
and operational strategy of the firm. The manner in which the human resource practices and
strategies have been intertwined at Amazon as well as Microsoft is an instance of how
businesses of giant organizations are run with common vision and objectives and how these
organizations make money for their employees and investors. The amount of investment
which have been made by Amazon and Microsoft for their employees and how well the
cultures of work are aligned to the business strategies of the two organizations by their
human resource managers is clear from the results which have been posted by both the
companies, year after year.

Dhwani Shah
Roll no. 20
M-Com Part 2
Sem-III

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References:
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