Amazon introduces 30-hours work in a week

Amazon is planning to introduce an option of reduced work hours.

The Washington Post: Amazon is piloting teams with a 30-hour workweek

This new program will allow some employees to choose 30-hours work in a week instead of 40-hours full-time work. Subjects will be paid reduced salary, but they can return to full-time work as they would like. Thus, this rule will offer a variation of working styles.

Unfortunately, the subjects of altered work will be a limited number of employees for a while. Amazon denied the possibility to adopt reduced work hours to all the company.

Recently, Amazon became infamous because its work environment was reported with a critical tone in which employees were had to work for an extremely long time in a week without rest. As well as in the US, criticism was also ignited the UK. Meanwhile, Amazon in Japan changed its delivering partner suddenly. There was a rumor that the previous delivery company could not stand Amazon’s demand for providing fast services with cheap reward.

It is not rare that a big company is blamed on exploiting employees. Companies are responsible for maintaining the happy relationship between customers and employees. On the other hand, many regions in the market are so competitive that providers have to offer good services with extremely low cost. Some people, especially in a small company, survive the battle with accepting long-time working. Also, many companies have no power for educating new employees with great costs. It makes existing employees more burdened instead of sharing tasks with rookies.

Amazon is a big company. It may have established several know-hows to administer its routine tasks by non-skilled workers. A large part of tasks in Amazon is to pick items. Education for employees can be optimized. In addition, many part-time workers are willing to work at Amazon because of its popularity. Thus, Amazon is one of the most advantageous companies to introduce work sharing scheme.

It is no doubt that diversity of working styles will contribute to goodness in our society. More and more people will want to work for limited hours, because work itself will be unnecessary in the future thanks to coming robots era. I support Amazon’s new policy.