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This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in anyother region where Amazon has offices or operations and should not be used for any public or media consumption.

Human Resources Case Study 1

Rakeshs Early Days in Amazon

Rakesh joined Amazon in India as an HR Business Partner for the Orient organization a few months ago,during the Performance Review process and proceedings. He was entrusted with the responsibility ofconducting the Performance Review for an 825 member organization spread across two sites, with limited

guidance from his Seattle counterpart, which turned out to be a huge learning experience for him. It helpedRakesh quickly get a sketch of the organization, its leaders, the goals and the performance metrics that theorganization chases. During all this, Rakesh continued to execute his launch plan, meeting key Leaders andgoing through a bunch of documents.

Rakesh was the fourth HR partner Orient was seeing in 24 months, and the organization had grown by 48%.Although Orient was spread across 4 countries, 81% of its employees were in India. The India team had 3operation groups, and as one of the Leaders had explained - One team processes tra nsaction A, the secondone processes Band the third team processes everything else for all Amazon market places . Rakesh learntthat the group initially was set up for processing A and B, but with increasing ad-hoc requests from customers,a 95 member team was carved out to process everything else 8 months ago. As of today this team strength

stands at 161. Over the last 24 months, A transactions have gone up by 4.5 times and B transactions havegone up by 3 times.

In his initial conversation with the front line Operations Managers, Rakesh could clearly sense how far the teamhad progressed 2 years ago stakeholders created the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and weexecuted them, today we create the Standard Operating Procedures and just get them signed off by businesssaid one of them. This was clearly something that had moved from nice to have to a basic expectation fromthis role. One of the Managers from the everything else team claimed with pride Earlier there were justtransactions A and B, and sometimes we processed some other transactions, but now there is increased trust inour delivery, and so the everything else team has been growing. Today, we onboard one new process everymonth. Rakesh also learnt that the average lifecycle of an everything else process was a mere 6 months. Noteverybody was happy with the growth of the everything else team as that meant sharing or lendingbandwidth for teams such as Process and Technology teams that build tools for A and B to everything else This increased waiting time for even small requests from A and B the core tasks they are supposed toautomate. In its current state, the Quality team that was set up 12 months ago continues to focus on A but isyet to lay down processes for B. Tickets (for task resolutions) raised against B remain open for longerdurations, while the major escalations are being raised against the everything else team. The associatepopulation at L2 1 and L3 form 85% of the team, while Orient has continued to hire L4 Manager talent fromoutside and there has been no movement from L3 to L4 in the last 12 months (Orient had no IndividualContributors at L4 in the 3 operations teams). Feedback from associate focus group sessions conducted 6months ago highlighted lack of career progression and lack of understanding around performance assessment.

Subsequently Rakesh met Janak, the India Leader of Orient, who had just been promoted to a Director (L8) andwas set to move back to Seattle in 6 months, after a 3 year assignment in India ramping up Orient. Janak wasconfident of the teams fortunes - It was supposed to be a 2 year assignment, but I decided to spend anadditional year, things were not yet stable 12 month ago, but now we have Suhas (Sr. Manager L7) who has

1 Employee levels in Amazon in India begin at L2 (associate) at the lowest level and go up to L10 (VP)

8/11/2019 HumanResources-CaseStudy1

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Amazon Confidential

This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in anyother region where Amazon has offices or operations and should not be used for any public or media consumption.

been here for 18 months and is now ready to manage this place. He has put in place a stable training program,hired the L6 Training Manager and ramped up a team of content developers. He has driven down costsconsiderably through a bunch of projects. Now he has begun setting up the ACES 2 program with 2 ProgramManagers, which is going to be key for streamlining tasks that we need to focus on now. It will be important foryou to also work closely with Suhas going forward he said.

Rakeshs final conversation was with the World Wide VP of Orient (based in Seattle) over a video conference.The VP first insisted that Rakesh stick around for at least 2 years and then went on to share his thoughtsLook, the team in India is doing great, the customers are happy and we have been receiving incrediblefeedback. On the A transaction alone we have driven down costs by 52% per transaction over the last 2 years.But it worries me that we keep growing so fast, every time I visit India we seem to have doubled. What I want isfor this team is to focus on automation and elimination of tasks, and they need to be able to process morewithout adding headcount at this rate. I have already told them to begin tracking cost related metrics for everytransaction we process for our customers, and we need to start rationalizing the kind of things we agree to dofor our customers along with owning business outcomes rather than transactional metrics . At the end of theconversation Rakesh asked the VP what support he needed fr om HR, the VP left him with I would like HR tocome back and tell me if the team in India is set up right for what I have just said I want of them .

Rakesh quickly collected data from another similar organization in Amazon India Symbol; which has existedlonger and has stable operations in India and worldwide. The data compelled Rakesh to come to someconclusions, but he did not want to rush into making call outs.

Ratios Symbol India Orient IndiaL4 Manager : L2+L3Associates

1 : 26 1 : 23

L5+ Ops Manager : L2+L3Associates

1 : 126 1 : 102

L3 SMEs + L3 Leads : L2+L3Associates

1 : 11 1 : 47

Trainers : L2+L3 Associates 1 : 66 1 : 187Quality Team : L2+L3Associates

1 : 20 1 : 39

HRBPs : Total Employees 1: 250 1 : 825ACES Team Resources :Total Employees

1: 209 1 : 413

Please answer each question crisply, with rationale in no more than 500 words

1. Among Org Structure, Org Capability and Org Leadership, which should be Rakeshs primary focus? And

why?

2. What are the steps Rakesh should take to begin addressing the identified primary focus above?

2 ACES is the sub-function that is composed of process experts focused on process optimization typically Black Belts and Master Black Belts