Amazon to experiment with part-time tech teams

SAN FRANCISCO — In an effort to lure hard-to-hire tech workers and possibly recast its reputation as a harsh workplace, Amazon plans to pilot a program of part-time teams composed entirely of employees putting in 30-hour weeks.

The Seattle company will test the use of engineers and tech staff who work 30 hours a week, thus sidestepping many of the problems faced by part-time workers in a full-time environment.

The pilot teams’ core hours would be Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with flexible hours throughout the week. The 30-hour groups would receive the same benefits as 40-hour-a-week employees but less pay, Amazon said.

The plan is smart from a recruiting standpoint and a unique strategy in the highly competitive tech world, said Kate Kennedy with the Society for Human Resource Management.

“The hours would be particularly appealing to workers with children in school," she said.

This may help it attract more women, who are under-represented at tech companies including Amazon, where 61% of Amazon's global staff is male. A culture that's not amenable to working parents is one reason women say they leave the tech industry.

Amazon may be surprised when workers with other backgrounds apply.

“This isn’t just good for women. Not all parents are women and not all women are parents. This would be good for anyone who has obligations outside of work or who simply wants a better work-life balance,” said Joelle Emerson, CEO of Paradigm, a San Francisco strategy firm that advises tech companies on how to build diverse and inclusive organizations.

HIRING SPREE

Like many tech companies, Amazon is in a constant fight to find more technical workers. The company has been on a hiring spree. In its July earnings statement, Amazon said it had 268,900 permanent employees, a gain of 23,700 employees over the previous quarter and a 47% increase year-over-year.

Amazon's plans for the new teams, posted Thursday, comes a year to the week after TheNew York Times published a bruising story about the competitive and unforgiving workplace culture of the Seattle online retailer. Amazon said the article omitted information about the company that painted a different picture.

The structure could spread through the tech world, where hiring technical staff is a struggle and bringing in more women and minorities is on many companies' to-do lists.

Amazon is such a leader as an employer that “when they do something, other people pay attention,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute in New York, who called the concept groundbreaking. She said she had heard of only a very few law and accounting firms that have tried anything similar.

The company, in an invitation to potential workers on its website, said the pilot program is aimed at the company’s "diverse workforce" and the realization that a traditional full-time schedule might not be a one-size-fits-all model.

Amazon declined to comment further on the announcement.

While many Amazon employees work a reduced 30-hour-per-week schedule, the difference here is that the entire team would be composed of part-time employees, including managers.

“We want to create a work environment that is tailored to a reduced schedule and still fosters success and career growth,” the invitation said. Amazon will hold an open meeting to introduce the concept Thursday in Seattle.

PART-TIME WORK DECLINING

By making it more attractive to work part time, Amazon is going against the grain.

Since 2005, the number of workplaces that allow staff employees to work part time has dropped 13%, data from the Families and Work Institute shows.

Part-time work has long been seen as deviant and not ‘real work,’ the institute's Galinsky said. While U.S. employers are increasingly allowing workers more flexibility in start times and working from home, it results in enabling them to work more hours, not fewer.

However, many people who want to work and who want to do demanding, technical jobs may still not want to work 40, 50 or more hours per week.

The innovation in the Amazon 30-hour teams would be to legitimize the idea that professionals could be committed to their jobs and yet not work full time.

“If it’s a whole group and it’s the norm, it would be easier,” Galinsky said.

The devil will be in the details, said Paradigm's Emerson. Amazon would need to create norms within the company about when meetings and off-site trainings can be scheduled, for example, so that staff in 30-hour teams could always attend.

“I’ll be interested in how they operationalize it,” Emerson said.