Employee Turnover and Low Satisfaction Based on Amazon’s Company Leadership

Employee Turnover and Low Satisfaction Based on Amazon’s Company Leadership

In many companies, employee turnover has placed pressure on leadership and leadership strategies.one of the companies that experience employee turnover is Amazon company, where ban uber of questions have been raised recently regarding the high number of employees leaving the organization. Most authoritative leadership styles impact organizations negatively by compromising the efficiency of employees at work, their creativity and innovation, and also making some employees miserable to the point of leaving the company (Mabasa, 2018). Most employees have portrayed Amazon as a good company with exciting jobs, freedom among the most talented co-workers, and chances of obtaining high compensations. Still, they have complained of the jobs becoming too demanding, especially for employees with family obligations and health problems. Other employees have complained about their bosses lacking empathy regarding their issues. All these complaints indicate that Amazon’s company has a low retention strategy when it comes to individuals within the organization. Despite producing the best customer services and long-term profits, the company has disappointed a few workers (Mabasa, 2018). Based on these issues, I have been hired by the CEO OF Amazon company to develop a top-down training program that will be centralized on primary leadership styles, to reduce employee turnover and increase motivation among employees. This essay focuses on analyzing four distinct leadership styles to determine the most appropriate form for Amazon company, and then make recommendations on the most suitable style to be utilized in this training.

Analysis of Leadership Styles

Transformational Leadership

This leadership style encompasses managers encouraging, inspiring, and motivating employees to innovate and create changes that will aid in the growth and future success of the company. This style of leadership is attained by creating a sense of employee ownership and culture and independence within the job environment. Communication strategies that are utilized in this leadership style are the information-rich face to face communication with workers, which is usually channeled towards employee satisfaction (Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016). The most promising industries for transformational leadership include; the computer Systems industry, where employees are required to satisfy clients without waiting for approval from the supervisor, the entertainment industry where freedom of employees enable s them to provide bold and new ideas that can push the original content. Another is bookselling companies. In the case of Amazon company that is a top bookselling company, transformational leadership could be used to envision, inspire, and innovate. The company can ensure that it puts people, society, and employees in the organization as a priority before ay profits. Amazon can ensure that the company is not about money but about humility, vision and passion, and bringing others to the highest levels of greatness. Transformational leadership works in all companies where the leaders are ready to incorporate changes made by changing themselves first.

Servant Leadership

This form of leadership encompasses individuals in management or employees interact with each other to achieve more authority other than power. This system is use din most decentralized management structures. In servant leadership, the management demonstrates aspects of listening, empathy, personal growth of others, and commitment. A skilled manager in communication can listen to earnestly and speak actively (Asra-Ul-Haq & Kuchinke, 2016). A servant leader prioritizes understanding others rather than to be understood and listens while demonstrating interest, respect, and authentic warmth. Servant leadership works well in hotel industries, whereby putting the needs of employees first through giving them feedback and working with them to train and motivate them, a hotel can experience sustained growth and collaborative relationships that will ensure company growth and employee retention. The business that keeps changing in their work culture cannot do well with servant leadership, due to a lack of stability that makes it difficult for managers to implement this system. Managers that worry about hurting the feelings of their employees can hardly make critical decisions and changes regarding work performance. In the context of Amazon, the company can ensure retention of employee sin Amazon foods treating employees like equals through collaborating with them in decision making and not view them as an inconvenience.

Democratic Leadership

It is a leadership style that encourages members of a group to take diverse participative roles in the decision-making process of the company. This form of leadership applies to all organizations, including private businesses, schools, and the government. Communication in this leadership style is done by encouraging contributions from each member and increased group morale. Everyone gets a chance to participate, and ideas are exchanged freely, while the discussion is encouraged (Fiaz et al., 2017). Democratic leaders offer a free flow of ideas while deciding who in the groups, get to contribute to the plans made. In Amazon’s company, democratic leadership can ensure that employees feel valued through collaboration and affirmation. When employees with family obligations are involved in problem-solving and decision-making duties, while retaining their ultimate say in the outcomes, employees will be encouraged to continue working for the betterment of the company and sacrificing for the good of the company.

Charismatic Leadership

This leadership style is applied as a technique of encouraging certain mannerisms in employees through communicating eloquently, persuading, and forcing individual personalities. Charismatic leaders motivate their followers to improve how some things are done within the organization. Charismatic leaders are persuasive and strategic in their communication, and they convey their visions in an inspiring manner so that others can join willingly and engage in their efforts (Wakabi, 2016). Charismatic leaders ensure that their followers gain confidence in things changing for the better. Charismatic leadership style works best for individuals in the sales and hospitality industries, whose skills can be improved and utilized to make things better. Charismatic leadership can fail in Christian churches where the church leaders abuse the trust that the congregation has built for them over time; this has negative spiritual implications on the faith of members of the congregation. For Amazon company, managers can motivate their employees by having magnetic personalities that everyone can be drawn to. A charismatic leader will enable other employees to work towards identifying with leadership and desiring to be leaders within the company.

Recommended Leadership Styles

To retain employees and ensure job satisfaction, Amazon company will need to focus on the transformational leadership style. For Amazon company to succeed in empowering and motivating its employees, CEO, Jeff Bezos will need to strengthen employee skills and performance beyond expectations. The company will need to ensure that employees follow the core values, beliefs, and principles of the company. Amazon’s management will exhibit the transformational leadership style by influencing employees to raise their awareness of what is expected of them in their work results. The traits to be identified in managers within the organization include; inspirational motivation, charisma and influence, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation (Puni et al., 2016). Management will need to place a high essence on the prioritization of customers and meeting their needs to ensure that employees address delay issues continuously, including stock-outs and defects on goods. The top leadership of the organization can encourage its employees to work harder y investing in their well-being, other than the high need for them to be productive.

Bezos can ensure that employees are not exploited by avoiding obsessing over the satisfaction of customers. As a transformational leader, Bezos will need to make it a priority to encourage employees to come up with more innovative solutions and develop new ideas for issues regarding the business. Management of each department can prioritize the involvement of employees in generating ideas that, through experimenting, can lead to successful innovations in the company. According to Puni et al. (2016), transformational leadership can be used effectively to stimulate critical thinking and encourage workers to partake in the presentation of solutions and new ideas. In Amazon, Bezos utilizes the method of disagreeing and committing that causes failures in group unity and conflict among workers. Bezos needs to emphasize and focus on the concept of social cohesion and be willing to compromise for the better of employee’s job satisfaction.

One of the strategies of retaining and encouraging employees is incorporating a performance evaluation system where the organization’s leadership and the staff who are performing well are reviewed. This way, the strengths and weaknesses of employees will be recorded in the system, and this will enable them to realize areas that need improvement, which will open doors for individual growth. Each individual’s consideration will be kept into account (De Sousa et al., 2018). While the best employees can be evaluated by performance, managers need to realize that meetings and feedback and listening to each person’s needs are vital in ensuring low turnover rates.

It will benefit Amazon company if leaders display charisma by making employees confident, through reminding them regularly about their visions and accomplishments. While employees might have confidence in the vision and success of the company, they need to trust their leaders when it comes to transparency and job security (Shah & Asad, 2018). Amazon company top management has received frequent accusations of utilizing the feedback technique to eliminate some employees that seem less efficient and sabotaging employees by unarguable feedbacks that seem toxic in the part of the management team. To prevent portraying traits of toxic leadership and to retain employees, Bezos can ensure that Amazon has strict measures on hypocrisy, corruption, manipulation, and criminal acts in the workplace.

Most studies have identified that transformational leadership leads to higher performance within organizations. Employees that take active parts in deciding what to do feel good and possess some amount of ownership on making things happen. Transformational leadership can enhance subordinate motivation (Mabasa, 2018). The degree to which employees in Amazon will be attracted to cohesiveness lies in them remaining motivated to be a part of the organization. Leaders in Amazon need to be prepared to modify their character, competitive strategies of the company, and formal structures and challenges to meet the new uncertain turnover rates and working environments.

Amazon’s company can prevent abusive leadership occurrences in a formal leadership role, through avoiding engagement with employees in aggressive and punitive behavior. Punitive and aggressive actions include; name-calling, ridiculing, and terrorizing employees through pay cuts, and threatening with job loss (Wakabi, 2016). The leadership style to be adopted by Amazon will be influenced by members of its workplace, nature, and quality of its employees. Transformational leadership is the most suitable in the case of vulnerable workers. Employees in Amazon are skilled professionals whose leadership style varies from that used in other companies with low experienced professionals. To manage employees in Amazon who are hardly knowledge-based, there needs to be an implementation of proper transformational leadership styles. Employers can allow leadership freedom in each department to ensure more liberty prevailing in each section.

Conclusion

Although in some companies, the degree of turnover based on job dissatisfaction is inevitable, employers can seek after keeping and maintaining team fresh, motivated, and competent employees through specific strategies in leadership. Retaining employees in Amazon is directly related d to its profitability, and also, turnover costs are very disruptive. Leaders need to ensure that when there is a vacant position, other team members can manage their duties and even those of the vacant position, which needs overall morale from the general management of the firm. Managers should not be restricted by their responsibilities, that they fail to take care of their staff and invest in motivating staff members. While Jeff Bezos has been considered to be transformational in some ways. He has not fully embraced all the aspects of transformational leadership that will make Amazon the best retention employee company. Despite inspiring and encouraging employees to work harder towards productivity, the working environment of Amazon has been considered toxic by those with health issues and others with many family obligations. For employees that want to excel in their careers regardless of obstacles, the culture of Amazon is high. Still, for those who wish to pursue their interests in the most ethical ways keenly, the culture of Amazon has been draining.in the field of organizational behavior, leadership is considered as the essential aspect. During individual and organization interactions, the leadership component is regarded as the most dynamic impact. The ability of the management to execute and ensure collaborated effort with employees depends on the capability of its leadership. To prevent turnover rates and ensure job satisfaction, there has to be a relationship between organizational performance and leadership style.

References

Asrar-ul-Haq, M., & Kuchinke, K. P. (2016). Impact of leadership styles on employees’ attitude towards their leader and performance: Empirical evidence from Pakistani banks. Future Business Journal, 2(1), 54-64. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314721016300032

De Sousa Sabbagha, M., Ledimo, O., & Martins, N. (2018). Predicting staff retention from employee motivation and job satisfaction. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 28(2), 136-140. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14330237.2018.1454578

Fiaz, M., Su, Q., & Saqib, A. (2017). Leadership styles and employees’ motivation: Perspective from an emerging economy. The Journal of Developing Areas, 51(4), 143-156. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/662834/summary

Mabasa, T. R. (2018). Relationship between leadership styles employee commitment and business performance: a study of black top managers in state-owned enterprises (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pretoria). https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/67781

Puni, A., Agyemang, C. B., & Asamoah, E. S. (2016). Leadership styles, employee turnover intentions and counterproductive work behaviors. International Journal of innovative research and development, 5(1), 1-7. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Albert_Puni/publication/290797675_Leadership_Styles_Employee_Turnover_Intentions_and_Counterproductive_Work_Behaviours/links/569b9e8408aeeea985a5703c/Leadership-Styles-Employee-Turnover-Intentions-and-Counterproductive-Work-Behaviours.pdf

Shah, M., & Asad, M. (2018). Effect of motivation on employee retention: Mediating role of perceived organizational support. European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences, 7(2), pp-511. http://european-science.com/eojnss/article/view/5280

Wakabi, B. M. (2016). Leadership style and staff retention in organizations. International Journal of Science and Research, 5(1), 412-416. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernard_Muhangi/publication/289519829_Leadership_style_and_staff_retention_in_organisations/links/568e03c308aeaa1481ae80f3.pdf

Yahaya, R., & Ebrahim, F. (2016). Leadership styles and organizational commitment: literature review. Journal of Management Development. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JMD-01-2015-0004/full/html