Amazon Workers Facing Firing Can Appeal To a Jury of Their Co-Workers (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jane was working in Amazon's Seattle headquarters when she was asked to a meeting with her manager and a human resources representative. They gave her a document outlining concerns about her work performance and spelled out three choices. She could quit and receive severance pay, spend the next several weeks trying to keep her job by meeting certain performance goals, or square off with her manager in a videoconference version of the Thunderdome, pleading her case with a panel of co-workers while her boss argued against her. Jane, who asked that her real name not be used to discuss a personal matter, chose the last one.

Amazon is borrowing a page from union grievance processes that don't apply to most corporate employees. But only about 30 percent of those who appeal their manager's criticisms prevail, meaning they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the company with different bosses, according to people familiar with the matter. Eighteen months after its debut, the hearing process has created resentment and raised questions about fairness, according to current and former workers as well as attorneys familiar with their situations. "It's a kangaroo court," says George Tamblyn, a Seattle employment lawyer who helped one former Amazon worker plan her appeal earlier this year. "My impression of the process is it's totally unfair." According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan. The program, called "Pivot," was started last year.

Here's what Amazon has to say on the matter: "Pivot is a uniquely Amazonian program that was thoughtfully designed to provide a fair and transparent process for employees who need support. When employees are placed in Pivot, they have the option of working with their manager and HR to improve with a clear plan forward, of leaving Amazon with severance, or of appealing if they feel they shouldn't be in the program. Just over a year into program, we're pleased with the support it offers our employees and we're continuing to iterate based on employee feedback and their needs."

Comments

Union

[Thelasko]

Sounds like a union. If an employee is fired, they can appeal to the union to get their job back. However, I've never seen a case where the union didn't side with the employee.

I'm betting they implemented this process to avoid true unionization.

Re:Union

[Pinky's Brain]

Presumably managers aren't entirely terrible, the coworkers agreeing with him 70% of the time doesn't sound very outlandish to me.

These presumably aren't minimum wage jobs, if someone is dead weight they drag everyone down.

Re:Union

[dgatwood]

I wonder why only 30% keep their jobs. Do their coworkers just hate them, too? Are they getting fired because they're terrible at their jobs? Does the company misrepresent them?

One problem is that the same manager is responsible for the performance improvement plan who was responsible for the initial decision. So the odds of anyone surviving the performance improvement plan are likely fairly low. After all, if the person was underperforming, it is usually either because the person wasn't enjoying the job (and will continue to not enjoy it), was being mismanaged (and will continue to be mismanaged), or wasn't actually underperforming and is being targeted by the manager (and will continue to be targeted). The only edge case that this ostensibly solves would be giving people a chance to make up for a bad period caused by problems outside of work that impacted work, and even then, only if it doesn't overlap multiple review periods.

For this to actually reduce the number of firings significantly, it would need to be combined with automatically transferring the person to a different team under a different manager prior to starting the performance improvement plan.

Crappy Process

[Herkum01]

After reading the article the outcome seems to be,

1. Employee is wrong, they are still let go
2. Employee is right, you keep your job... "orking for the same manager that has a problem with you!"

How is either of these outcome going to be better for the company or the employee?

Re: Crappy Process

[dgatwood]

Which is what makes the entire concept hilarious. It's like doing an experiment in which you don't bother trying to control for outside variables, and when it fails, running it again just in case you might get different results the next time.

Moving the employee to a new team should really be the first step in the process. Then, and only then can you determine whether the performance problem is primarily the employee's fault or the environment's fault (manager, coworkers, project, etc.).

Re:Maybe there's a twist?

[ShanghaiBill]

Isn't that about the same as forced arbitration?

Not really. You can lose in arbitration. But she can't lose in this process. She has three choices. If she chooses the 3rd, and the "jury" votes against her, she can still go back to option 1 or 2. So if she wants to keep her job, picking option 3 is a no-brainer.

However, I have found that when people are fired for cause, their co-workers are generally not very sympathetic. Peers are usually more aware than management of who is deadweight. Often the prevailing sentiment is "What took so long?"

Re:Here is my "You will be fired" Letter

[Tough Love]

That review is frightening. The manager frames it as if (s)he is doing something good for you and the company, whereas everybody knows that this is just a way to exit an employee without cause. What causes this behavior, is it just pure malice, or is the manager's job in jeopardy if they don't exit X number of employees this way each year? A bit of both?