Amazon’s Career Choice Program Helps 7,000 Employees Pursue New Careers in High-Demand Fields
July 21 2016 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Amazon pre-pays 95 percent of tuition for
courses in high-demand fields, regardless of relevancy to
Amazon
Employees take classes on-site at eight Amazon
fulfillment centers with plans for an additional 25 classrooms
Career Choice is now open source – Amazon is
sharing best practices and lessons learned to help other companies
implement similar programs
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced milestones for its
innovative Career Choice Program. The key features of the company’s
peculiar Career Choice Program are that it pre-pays 95 percent of
the cost of tuition to remove the financial barrier associated with
returning to school, makes it easier for employees to participate
by offering dedicated Career Choice classrooms on-site, and
exclusively supports coursework related to in-demand fields
according to sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics – even if
those skills are not related to jobs at Amazon. Since its inception
four years ago, more than 7,000 Amazon employees in 10 countries
have participated in Career Choice.
“We’re energized by the interest and enthusiasm in Career Choice
that we’ve seen from our employees,” said Dave Clark, senior vice
president of worldwide operations for Amazon. “Through Career
Choice our employees are becoming nurses, pharmacy technicians,
accountants, and commercial drivers – all high-demand fields and
many that provide a great service to the community. We’re very
proud of our employees who are taking advantage of the opportunity
and look forward to seeing many more step forward in the years to
come.”
Since the launch of Career Choice, Amazon has made several
enhancements and incremental investments in the program since it
first launched in July of 2012:
- Increased the amount of tuition
pre-paid for courses to $12,000 over four years.
- Decreased the amount of time associates
must be with the company to become eligible to just one year of
employment.
- Reduced associate commuting times by
bringing college and vocational courses onsite.
- Created purpose-built classrooms at
eight of its U.S. fulfillment centers and announced plans earlier
this year to create an additional 25 dedicated on-site Career
Choice classrooms. (Associate participation rates at fulfillment
centers with dedicated on-site classrooms rose by 107 percent over
prior years).
- Beginning this year, most new
fulfillment centers will be built with on-site classrooms as part
of their standard blueprint. Amazon will also invest in building
dedicated on-site classrooms at a dozen additional existing
fulfillment centers across the U.S.
Highlights of employee participation:
- More than 7,000 hourly employees in 10
countries have participated in the program.
- More than 1,300 associates have taken a
college-level course or vocational program onsite at an Amazon
fulfillment center. That’s the equivalent enrollment of a small
college.
- Amazon associates have taken classes at
nearly 1,500 different educational institutions since the program’s
inception. That’s more than the number of public community colleges
in the U.S.
- Since the program’s launch, employees
are pursuing degrees in game design and visual communications,
nursing, IT programming, and radiology, to name a few. Top chosen
fields of study for Amazon employees are commercial driver license,
computer and information technology, health and sciences, and
accounting.
- The most popular course taken by Amazon
employees is Commercial Driver Training. Amazon employees have
collectively driven semi-trailer trucks more than 15 million miles
as part of their training and in the first months of their new
careers. That’s the equivalent of traveling around the world 600
times.
Amazon is now open-sourcing the Career Choice Program and
sharing its best practices and lessons learned to help other
companies implement similar programs. To learn more about Career
Choice and how it can be applied at other businesses, contact Juan
Garcia at CareerChoice@amazon.com.
In addition to the Career Choice Program, full-time hourly
Amazon employees receive competitive wages and a comprehensive
benefits package, including healthcare, 401(k) and company stock
awards starting on day one, as well as generous maternity and
parental leave benefits. Interested candidates can learn more or
apply online at www.amazondelivers.jobs.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets,
Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit
www.amazon.com/about.
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