I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER...
Few might have noticed it, but last summer, Amazon updated its list of 14 “Leadership Principles” by adding two new entries, entitled “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” and “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility”, clearly setting a KINDNESS-oriented tone for the future of the massive multinational organization. Within his final letter to shareholders before stepping down as CEO, Jeff Bezos already addressed the previous criticisms towards the tech giant’s brutal workplace culture. These 2 new entries, the first ones since 2015, might be seen as one his last will to set a new tone for the upcoming years of the tech giant.
The first new principle, “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer,” is engaging the company’s leaders to “work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment.” The last one “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility,” is acknowledging the often negative impact that the company is having on its environments (may they be economic, social or ecological) and on communities.
Let’s hope that these commendables words will soon be turned in real KIND actions in order to end too often terrific, yet real, workplace horror stories. In the USA, where Amazon is employing more than 750,000 people, the company latest Labor Deal signed in December with the National Labor Relations Board (N.L.R.B.) already gave workers more power to organize, going further than any previous settlement that the e-commerce giant has made. And this January, the New York Post also reported that the tech giant has quietly ended a three year-old program that paid employees to post nice things about the company on social media.
We wish that these 2 first positive steps will be followed by many more. At KINDNESSforBusiness, we will keep watching … and maybe soon provide new ways to measure KINDNESS at work. Stay tuned !
