Amazon.com Inc
Competition has increasingly elicited concerns on sustainability and corporate social responsibility in the modern business world. Development and implementation of sustainability strategies have thus become a significant area of interest, calling businesses to acknowledge the paybacks of performance management in their operations. Thus, the human resource function becomes vital in this respect due to its unique position in the implementation of sustainability schemes. Undoubtedly, performance management and sustainability should go hand in hand to attain an organization’s long-term goals and corporate social responsibility efforts.
For this assignment, I consider the amazon.com Inc company. Amazon.com, Inc is an international company that majors on electronic trade, cloud computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and digital streaming. The company is based in Washington in the US. Globally, this company enjoys being the leading internet trader in terms of income and capitalization of markets (Locklear, 2018). Corporate social responsibility strategies in the company have resulted in its popularity and a notable high-profit margin in the business world.
Amazon.com Inc has set up various strategies in its quest to achieve corporate social responsibility. To begin with, the company has been at the forefront of educating and empowering its workers. The company reportedly pays 95% tuition fees for its employees to undertake courses in airplane mechanics or nursing (Dudovskiy, 2020). Also, the company has a Virtual Contact Centre, which allows its employees to work from the comforts of their homes (Dudovskiy, 2020). These schemes have seen the company’s employees get more dedicated and motivated towards their duties.
Additionally, the company has taken a keen consideration of gender equality and minorities in its operations. The company has allegedly incorporated affinity groups known as employee resource groups, whose main task is to fight gender violence (Dudovskiy, 2020). Moreover, the company supports the local communities through the provision of relief food, supporting local and nonprofit organizations with a cash gift, and through donations of electronic devices to schools (Dudovskiy, 2020). Through the above mentioned and several other initiatives, the company has attained its corporate social responsibility aspect.
In ensuring the organization’s performance management system has a positive, dynamic relationship with corporate social responsibility initiatives, HR can put into practice various strategies. Firstly, the HR professional should engage employees’ perceptions of CSR in their organizations. The HR personnel should ensure that the policy put in place for CSR achievement are favorable to the employees (Sharma & Tewari, 2017). CSR strategies in an organization influence the employees’ attitudes and behavior towards their responsibilities. Thus, for performance management, an employee-favorable plan should be put in place.
Secondly, the HR personnel should ensure that the organization is capable of realizing the CSR strategies put in place. Sharma and Tewari (2017) noted an organization’s capability to actualize its CSR strategies positively impacts performance management because it motivates the employees towards the achievement of the set goals. The organization’s capacity ensures that the employees do not strive beyond their ability to accomplish their duties, thus motivating them and improving their performance.
Thirdly, the human resource manager should ensure that the CSR strategies are fit culturally. Sharma and Tewari (2017) denote that the organization’s CSR schemes and the consumers’ cultural beliefs and practices are congruent. By ensuring this congruence, the CSR schemes will have a positive impact on performance management as the consumers will favor the organization’s products.
An organization can put up several strategies to establish or improve its CSR. To begin with, the strategies should revolve around the company’s core competencies. CSR strategies will be less effective if they do not align with what the business already does (Morrissey, 2018). Additionally, organizations should ensure the CSR strategies cover issues that matter to the customers. By so doing, the set policies will be relevant and will serve the intended purposes. Moreover, Morrissey (2018) notes that the CSR strategies should aim at making employees proud. Overall, the CSR strategies should contribute positively to the organization’s performance and increase its productivity.
References
Dudovskiy, J. (2020, April 5). Amazon Corporate Social Responsibility (Amazon CSR): a brief overview https://research-methodology.net/amazon-corporate-social-responsibility/
Locklear, M. (2018). Amazon AWS Error Exposes Info on 31000 GoDaddy Servers. https://www.engadget.com/2018-08-09-amazon-aws-error-exposes-31-000-godaddy-servers.html
Morrissey, N. (2018, May 14). 5 Steps To Building A Sustainable CSR Program https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/steps-to-sustainable-csr/
Sharma, E., & Tewari, R. (2017). Engaging employee perception for effective corporate social responsibility: role of human resource professionals. Sage journals, 19(1), 111-130. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0972150917713277.