Question

How does Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Achieve Cultural Diversity and what are his best practices and initiatives for achieving cultural diversity in the organization?

For example, does his executive board contain any minorities?

Explain which leadership practices were successful in diversity efforts and which practices needed improvement.

Answer 1

Introduction

Cultural diversity in present times is a very important aspect of any company, while considering it's impact to society. In simple terms, any initiative towards cultural diversity in an organization ensures that minority groups in a location / country are recruited into the organizations and are properly represented in the management.

Amazon's Cultural Diversity

When Amazon inaugurated its Washington D.C. location in 2016, the CEO (Jeff Bezos) stressed on the importance of Cultural Diversity and the steps that the company would be taking to achieve the same. He established to the audience and also to the public by way of an email that was sent to his employees', that he and Amazon, as a whole, considers Cultural Diversity as a right and not just an obligation.

Best Practices or Initiatives by Amazon:

1. Diversity in Hiring - Like most organizations, the most effective practice employed by Amazon is by considering Diversity when recruiting their employees. For example, in order to complement the proportion of female population in their workforce, organizations tend to have "Women's Drive" - a hiring event solely for prospective women employees. Some of such practices employed by Amazon (per their official website) are as below:

• Recruiting students to their organization from diverse colleges. Example: Historically Black Colleges and Universities, women's colleges, etc.
• Hosting hiring fairs in communities that are highly underrepresented
• Partnering with Non-Profit Organizations or NGOs like Girls in Tech, Lesbians Who Tech, GEM Consortium Fellows, etc. to create opportunities
• Creating opportunities for people with disabilities. Example: Silent Delivery Station in India

2. Building an inclusive work environment - Post hiring, it is vitally important for any organization to hold their talent and reduce attrition. This is much more vital when it comes to culturally diverse employees as it would entail ensuring a culturally open atmosphere in the company and equal opportunities. Certain initiatives taken by Amazon to ensure their culturally diverse talent are engaged to the company for a long term are as follows:

• Company sponsored Mentor programs
• Developing leaders from aspiring employees through workshops like AmazeCon (gender diversity) and Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) conferences.
• Internal Learning Programs like AmazeCon (gender diversity), AmazeWIT (Women technologists conference), CORE, A11lyCon (accessibility disabilities)

3. Affinity Groups - Apart from programs and conferences, Amazon also has the concept of "Affinity Groups" for various employee groups. Example: People with Disabilities, Women in Engineering, Asians at Amazon, etc.

Minority in Management

In 2014, except Asians other Minorities (Blacks, Hispanics, etc.) made for less than 10% of managers which is substantially low as compared to their proportion in non-management roles. In 2018, Amazon decided to follow the "Rooney Rule" and recruit or appoint more diverse people into their Management Board.

Successful Practices and Initiatives Requiring Improvement

Despite company's best efforts, not all practices followed by an organization would be fruitful when coming to diversity. For example, based on numerous surveys and experiments, it has been established that HR and Recruitment Managers tend to ignore resumes of people with diverse names (Chinese, South-Asian, etc.) in the initial screening processes. Thereby, the effectiveness of recruiting diverse population into an organization can never be properly calculated.

Ensuring minority groups are given equal opportunities for management positions is another area that requires improvement. Similar is the case for women employees who is a mother or are expectant mothers.