Amazon to spend more than $700 million; aims to upskill one-third of its US employees by 2025

Amazon, the e-commerce company, is making huge investments in the automation sector. With this development on Thursday, 11^th July, Amazon stated that it would invest $7,000 on every employee in order to train them on new technologies for the next five years.

The new initiatives will allow one-third of its US employees to work on more high-tech operations, and the programs will also help its employees to gain better training on emerging technologies such as machine learning.

Amazon, which is currently using more robots to help arrange and ship packages, informed it would provide training to 100,000 employees within 2025. This enables its workers to move across advanced skilled jobs in Amazon or discover new careers across various firms, and statement revealed on Thursday said.

The new program is one of the largest employee up-skilling efforts of Amazon in the world. The program will be applied within the e-commerce firm from corporate employees to warehouse employees across the US.

Amazon came up with this initiative because of strong labor market, labor tension at Amazon, and increasing concern of unemployment due to automation, all components that would place long term challenges to Amazon and its rivals.

Amazon’s upskilling 2025 project will cost the company to invest more than $700 million, the company stated.

One program is meant for employees lacking technical skills, help them to learn and practice coding tools of Amazon while another program will offer training to employees of Amazon’s fulfillment centers and provide paid learning time to become certified IT-based support technicians.

Further Amazon mentioned the company would enhance its apprenticeship program and also a Career Choice program- a nine year old program. These programs invest into tuition and offer on-site classrooms across its fulfillment centers for workers to train them for careers in commercial-truck driving, nursing, aircraft maintenance, and others. Around 25,000 workers have already enrolled for this program.

Amazon is offering another program for its developer’s team, especially for those believing they lack technical skills. Amazon is launching ‘Machine Learning University’ program consist of six-week modules set that will be instructed by Amazon employees related to the technology area that plays a significant role in customer innovation.

Automation is playing an important role across large warehouses of Amazon. Devices inform employees to walk in a specific direction and collect the package from a shelf. And there are indications that technology is simplifying the work of Amazon.

The program also allows employees working across fulfillment centers to shift to technical roles even without having any IT experience. Employees without technical knowledge would adopt skills so as to move into software engineering roles. Amazon will also provide pre-paid tuition to teach high demand career of their choice for fulfillment center employees.

Human resources senior vice president, Beth Galetti, addressed, “For us, creating these opportunities is just the beginning. While many of our employees want to build their careers here, for others, it might be a stepping stone to different aspirations.”

During the previous holiday season, the company recruited very few temporary employees in comparison to 2018, and the previous quarter, Amazon’s headcount accounted for 12 percent, the lowest growth in years.

Amazon also revealed it has included over 200,000 robots to carry operations such as stacking toes and shifting merchandise racks within its worldwide fulfillment centers.

Amazon stated it has recruited around 300,000 candidates across the world from 2012. Amazon is hoping to have 300,000 US employees by 2019.

Amazon examined its internal employment and hiring information, and it noticed that the fastest growing job roles are data-mapping specialists, solutions architects, data scientists, and business analysts.