Gisela Hausmann had a unique perspective on Amazon when she started a job in 2019 as a front-line worker at one of the company’s delivery hubs in South Carolina.
A native of Vienna, Austria, she had years of experience as a logistics professional, learning the industry from the ground up at FedEx, and working for a major ocean freight shipping company. She had also been following Amazon closely for many years as an independent author using its platforms to publish books.
To say that she thought highly of Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos would be an understatement. Based on her experience as an early author on the Kindle and CreateSpace platforms, she especially admired Amazon’s impact on publishing.
“I saw them doing the things that [authors] barely dreamed about, because this was so amazing that nobody even hoped that it could happen — then Bezos did it!” Hausmann says. “He was a god in my eyes. I call him the new Gutenberg.”
Working at the Amazon Delivery Station did not give her the same feeling.
As she explains, the work itself wasn’t the problem. After getting up to speed in her job stowing packages, she was able to exceed Amazon’s productivity benchmarks. She didn’t see or experience commonly reported problems in Amazon’s warehouses, such as workers skipping bathroom breaks to keep up.
But she was surprised at what she describes as lackluster training, a lack of clear best practices, an apparent inability to turn input from well-meaning employees into operational improvements, and an overall disconnect between Amazon’s leadership principles and the realities of its fast-growing delivery network.
After 468 days, Hausmann decided to leave due to what she described as an accumulation of frustrations.
She says she hadn’t planned to write a book when she started the job. Her main objective was to work her way up in the logistics division of a company she admires. But she changed her mind after realizing that her first-hand experience, combined with her background, could provide some unique and potentially valuable insights for people interested in the company.
Her book, Inside Amazon: My Story, includes ideas for Amazon, which she hopes might catch the attention of Amazon’s executives as they work to fulfill the company’s latest leadership principle of striving to be “Earth’s Best Employer.”
Here’s a summary of five of her suggestions:
- Develop a world-class training program, with a rigorous focus on best practices to ensure everyone is doing each job in the best way known to the company.
- Seek to identify the workers who want to build long-lasting careers with the company, those who see it as more than just a job, focus on their professional development, and promote the best of them, instead of focusing mostly on young college grads who, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, will change jobs after only 2.8 years.
- Implement clear practices and procedures for receiving, evaluating and implementing employee feedback for operational improvements, down to the tiniest details.
- Adapt or supplement the company’s leadership principles and mantras with concepts more relevant to front-line workers. Amazon sayings such as “It’s Always Day One” and “Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History” may inspire people in a creative office environment, but they can fall flat in service industries, becoming a subject of jokes and a source of frustration.
- Amazon could have given free Prime memberships to workers as a reward during the pandemic, holding them up as heroes and generating goodwill among the workforce, making them more likely to advocate for Amazon in their communities as goodwill ambassadors for the company.
But can Amazon really become Earth’s best employer? Hausmann, who’s still a fan of the company, says she’s “100% sure” that it can.
“They will always be on my pedestal,” she says. “But I would hope that they live up to what they say about themselves and what they can do. And if they finally realize how great logistics can be, or put people in charge who see that, then they will get there.”
Hausmann talks her experiences and observations on this episode of Day 2, GeekWire’s podcast about everything Amazon.
Listen to Day 2 above, and subscribe in any podcast app.
