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This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any
other region where Amazon has offices or operations and should not be used for any public or media consumption.

Human Resources Case Study 1
Rakeshs Early Days in Amazon
Rakesh joined Amazon in India as an HR Business Partner for the Orient organization a few months ago,
during the Performance Review process and proceedings. He was entrusted with the responsibility of
conducting the Performance Review for an 825 member organization spread across two sites, with limited
guidance from his Seattle counterpart, which turned out to be a huge learning experience for him. It helped
Rakesh quickly get a sketch of the organization, its leaders, the goals and the performance metrics that the
organization chases. During all this, Rakesh continued to execute his launch plan, meeting key Leaders and
going through a bunch of documents.
Rakesh was the fourth HR partner Orient was seeing in 24 months, and the organization had grown by 48%.
Although Orient was spread across 4 countries, 81% of its employees were in India. The India team had 3
operation groups, and as one of the Leaders had explained - One team processes transaction A, the second
one processes B and the third team processes everything else for all Amazon market places. Rakesh learnt
that the group initially was set up for processing A and B, but with increasing ad-hoc requests from customers,
a 95 member team was carved out to process everything else 8 months ago. As of today this team strength
stands at 161. Over the last 24 months, A transactions have gone up by 4.5 times and B transactions have
gone up by 3 times.
In his initial conversation with the front line Operations Managers, Rakesh could clearly sense how far the team
had progressed 2 years ago stakeholders created the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and we
executed them, today we create the Standard Operating Procedures and just get them signed off by business
said one of them. This was clearly something that had moved from nice to have to a basic expectation from
this role. One of the Managers from the everything else team claimed with pride Earlier there were just
transactions A and B, and sometimes we processed some other transactions, but now there is increased trust in
our delivery, and so the everything else team has been growing. Today, we onboard one new process every
month. Rakesh also learnt that the average lifecycle of an everything else process was a mere 6 months. Not
everybody was happy with the growth of the everything else team as that meant sharing or lending
bandwidth for teams such as Process and Technology teams that build tools for A and B to everything else.
This increased waiting time for even small requests from A and B the core tasks they are supposed to
automate. In its current state, the Quality team that was set up 12 months ago continues to focus on A but is
yet to lay down processes for B. Tickets (for task resolutions) raised against B remain open for longer
durations, while the major escalations are being raised against the everything else team. The associate
population at L2
1
and L3 form 85% of the team, while Orient has continued to hire L4 Manager talent from
outside and there has been no movement from L3 to L4 in the last 12 months (Orient had no Individual
Contributors at L4 in the 3 operations teams). Feedback from associate focus group sessions conducted 6
months ago highlighted lack of career progression and lack of understanding around performance assessment.
Subsequently Rakesh met Janak, the India Leader of Orient, who had just been promoted to a Director (L8) and
was set to move back to Seattle in 6 months, after a 3 year assignment in India ramping up Orient. Janak was
confident of the teams fortunes - It was supposed to be a 2 year assignment, but I decided to spend an
additional year, things were not yet stable 12 month ago, but now we have Suhas (Sr. Manager L7) who has

1
Employee levels in Amazon in India begin at L2 (associate) at the lowest level and go up to L10 (VP)

Amazon Confidential
This case and the numbers published in this case are not representative of any Amazon businesses within India or in any
other region where Amazon has offices or operations and should not be used for any public or media consumption.

been here for 18 months and is now ready to manage this place. He has put in place a stable training program,
hired the L6 Training Manager and ramped up a team of content developers. He has driven down costs
considerably through a bunch of projects. Now he has begun setting up the ACES
2
program with 2 Program
Managers, which is going to be key for streamlining tasks that we need to focus on now. It will be important for
you to also work closely with Suhas going forward he said.
Rakeshs final conversation was with the World Wide VP of Orient (based in Seattle) over a video conference.
The VP first insisted that Rakesh stick around for at least 2 years and then went onto share his thoughts
Look, the team in India is doing great, the customers are happy and we have been receiving incredible
feedback. On the A transaction alone we have driven down costs by 52% per transaction over the last 2 years.
But it worries me that we keep growing so fast, every time I visit India we seem to have doubled. What I want is
for this team is to focus on automation and elimination of tasks, and they need to be able to process more
without adding headcount at this rate. I have already told them to begin tracking cost related metrics for every
transaction we process for our customers, and we need to start rationalizing the kind of things we agree to do
for our customers along with owning business outcomes rather than transactional metrics. At the end of the
conversation Rakesh asked the VP what support he needed from HR, the VP left him with I would like HR to
come back and tell me if the team in India is set up right for what I have just said I want of them.
Rakesh quickly collected data from another similar organization in Amazon India Symbol; which has existed
longer and has stable operations in India and worldwide. The data compelled Rakesh to come to some
conclusions, but he did not want to rush into making call outs.
Ratios Symbol India Orient India
L4 Manager : L2+L3
Associates
1 : 26 1 : 23
L5+ Ops Manager : L2+L3
Associates
1 : 126 1 : 102
L3 SMEs + L3 Leads : L2+L3
Associates
1 : 11 1 : 47
Trainers : L2+L3 Associates 1 : 66 1 : 187
Quality Team : L2+L3
Associates
1 : 20 1 : 39
HRBPs : Total Employees 1: 250 1 : 825
ACES Team Resources :
Total Employees
1: 209 1 : 413

Please answer each question crisply, with rationale in no more than 500 words
1. Among Org Structure, Org Capability and Org Leadership, which should be Rakeshs primary focus? And
why?
2. What are the steps Rakesh should take to begin addressing the identified primary focus above?

2
ACES is the sub-function that is composed of process experts focused on process optimization typically Black Belts and Master Black Belts