Can fulfilment be so unfulfilling?

Insights into corporate values from global companies, inspired by the case of Amazon

In mid-September this year, Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, announced the company's return to office (RTO) policy to 5 days a week from January 2025, an action that sparked a strong wave of reaction from the company's employees and beyond.

The news was challenged on and off social media, and messages of disappointment from Amazon employees were echoed across multiple media channels. According to a Blind survey, 91% of Amazon employees said they were unhappy with the policy and 73% were considering quitting, highlighting the potential loss of talent within the company. Concerns were also raised about reduced attractiveness for new hires, morale issues within the wider existing team, the impact on Diversity & Inclusion for employees requiring adapted logistics, expectations of lower productivity and weakened trust in the future.

In his memo, Andy Jassy explains the decision for a 5-day RTO as follows: "Our culture is unique and has been one of the most important parts of our success in our first 29 years. But keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time," adding that "before the pandemic, it (remote working) was not a given".

Driven by the company's "obsession with making customers' lives easier and better every day" and the desire to "operate like the world's largest startup", for which "passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency, high ownership, fast decision making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply connected collaboration (...) and a shared commitment to each other". Passion, innovation, urgency, ownership, speed of decision and action, scrappiness, frugality and deep connections are presented as the driving factors of the company.

In the aftermath of the memo, rumours circulated that Amazon was trying to disguise additional layoffs by setting unfavourable conditions based on the need for cultural reconnection across the company. These rumours were based on the trend of layoffs initiated in 2022 and 2023. The announcement last October made it clear that the memo was in fact anticipating the news of a further 14,000 executive-level job cuts by the end of this year.

As a company, Amazon naturally tends to have high attrition rates in employment (with a peak of 159% in 2020, source: Vox) and has experienced three peaks in hiring of more than 60% in 2011 (+22.5K employees), 2017 (+225K) and 2020 (+500K), with a further +300K in 2021 (source: www.stockanalysis.com). This last jump in staffing occurred during COVID, driven by the exceptional need for additional delivery services in the aftermath of the pandemic. This rapid and massive increase in staff has made the company the second largest employer in the world, after Walmart, with more than 1.5 million employees.

Given the scale of recruitment and the size of Amazon as a company, it is not surprising to hear of challenges in the onboarding process, integrating the culture and effectively implementing the company's ways of working to maintain speed of decision and action. Andy Jassy seems to echo these sentiments when he links the need for less bureaucratic practices, a flatter organisation and greater integration of Amazon's principles in the workplace by new hires with the need for greater closeness in working relationships.

In his memo, the culture, purpose, values, principles and expected behaviours related to Amazon's way of doing business are stated and evidenced.

The case piqued my curiosity. How interesting that a fulfilment company, whose mission (obsession) is to meet the needs of its customers, should raise concerns about not meeting the expectations for fulfilling its supposedly first customers - its employees.

This led me to ask the following questions:

What is culture, at its core, and how defining is it in the context of shaping relationships and operating models within an organisation?
How can effective leadership channel, communicate and relate to the wider organisation?
How do you ultimately assess a candidate's or employee's fit with the organisation (and vice versa)? Based on what? What attracts a candidate to an organisation and keeps them there for the long term? How does a company ultimately contribute to an employee's fulfilment?
And what would that mean for someone applying to Amazon?

With this in mind, I set out to explore how 80 global organisations have defined their cultural foundations - purpose, values and principles - to shape expected behaviours.

The multi-sector sample (in order of relevance: technology, finance, FMCG, consulting, manufacturing and a few others) includes companies with a Glassdoors rating of 4 or above, with some additions from Forbes' 2024 Best Companies ranking. The study has led to some qualitative insights into the values, principles and expected behaviours of global organisations, the determinants of these values, and some implications of values (but not exclusively) in leadership, team management and talent management.

Values and their categories were studied primarily from the point of view of how an organisation directs its employees towards its corporate strategic goals, and therefore the relevance of a category within an organisation was assessed by the ease of access to information through its corporate channels. This methodological aspect is particularly important in the case of Sustainability. Given the recent trend in this category, global companies have generally included this principle in their policies, but some have elevated it to the level of a corporate value, thereby focusing the attention of specific employees. The same approach has been taken for all the other values and categories. For example, leadership: some have made it a value to focus on. However, all organisations need and want leaders, so the way in which profiles are developed and leadership skills are developed will differ. Similarly, for customer focus - all organisations want to serve customers, some elevate this strategic objective to a value, and this is to focus employees' attention on what customer focus means for the specific organisation.

Key highlights

Fulfilment is a multi-faceted concept encompassing satisfaction, achievement and state of being, and in retail refers to managing customer orders from source to delivery.
Values shape a company's identity, behaviour and character and are at the heart of its mission.
In the sample of global companies analysed, codified values shape their culture, with 92 categories identified across organisations, 11 of which are among the most common categories in global companies.
There's a shift from outcome-based to relationship-based values, with 6 of the top 11 shared values focusing on relationships and dynamics.
Values are shaping talent acquisition and leadership development, with a growing emphasis on group dynamics and process over individual outcomes.
Integrity emerged as the most common value among the companies surveyed, emphasising ethical decision-making and behaviour.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Sustainability are often general policies rather than core values, although some companies are actively embedding them in their value systems and there is an increasing focus on wellbeing and work-life balance.
Customer centricity is expressed in different ways, reflecting different motivational drivers such as relationships, delivery and experience.
For many organisations, collaboration and teamwork are as important as leadership and excellence in delivery.
Leadership is evolving from power and status to ownership, accountability and responsibility, emphasising collaboration, accountability and respect, and requiring a more diverse set of skills, including facilitation, empowerment and agility to adapt to change.
Ownership is emerging as a new dimension of leadership in global organisations.
Organisations are showing 3 ways of creating leaders: shaping leaders from strategic values without focusing on leadership as a value per se, focusing on leadership in a more 'traditional' sense with embodiment of corporate values, and focusing on ownership with embodiment of the organisation's mission.
Innovation is now balanced with Accountability & Responsibility and Respect, indicating a focus on both results and behaviour.
Organisational values are influenced by geographical and cultural origins, industry sector, regulatory environment, organisational size, strategic focus and leadership interpretation.
Culture and values play a significant role in attracting talent to an organisation and should not be overlooked by start-ups. Aligning personal and organisational values is critical to employee engagement and career development, job satisfaction and cultural fit.
While values are important, they are not the only determinant of an employee's fulfilment - compatibility with the employee's practical life needs and career development are also factors to consider.
Alignment between personal and organisational values is critical to employee satisfaction and performance. Values can change over time as society and generations evolve.
While there can be a disconnect between an individual and an organisation, or a team and an organisation, coaching tools can help align individual and organisational values during cultural shifts.
Amazon's case study reveals recent layoffs and restructuring efforts and highlights its unique culture focused on customer obsession, empowerment, innovation and agility.
Fulfilment at Amazon requires alignment with the company's fast-paced, high-performance culture and mission.
The ideal 'Amazonian' profile includes diverse backgrounds, an innovative mindset, a willingness to learn, customer focus, adaptability and an unwavering passion for fulfilment.

What is fulfilment ?

Fulfilment is a word with many meanings (source: Collins dictionary):

"Fulfilment:

1. Fulfilment is a feeling of satisfaction one gets from doing or achieving something, especially something useful.

2. The fulfilment of a promise, threat, request, hope, or duty is the event or act of it happening or being made to happen.

In American English:

1. the act or state of fulfilment - to see a dream come true, to achieve the fulfilment of one's hopes.

2. the state or quality of being fulfilled; completion; realisation

3. the process or business of handling and executing customer orders, such as packing, shipping, or processing checks.

Fulfilment - in retail (fʊlfɪlmənt) or fulfilment (retail: distribution)

1. Fulfilment is the process or method of managing customer orders from source to delivery.

2. Fulfilment services include taking orders from customers, managing and locating stock, picking and packing accurately, and getting the order to the customer on time.

3. Every major retailer requires its suppliers to meet stringent fulfilment requirements, including on-time delivery and order accuracy.

Based on this definition, fulfilment has many facets that can be grouped together:

It is about satisfaction, doing and achieving useful goals.
It is both a state of being / quality / feeling and an action.
It can be a promise, a threat, a request, a hope or an obligation.
In retail, it is a process and a way of handing, managing and delivering the right order to the customer on time in a seamless way".

It can be summarised as the seamless orchestration of actions and states to ensure the timely delivery of value and satisfaction to the organisation's stakeholders. Who are these stakeholders and how is a company's culture designed to meet their diverse needs?

The role of values and principles

At the heart of any organisation's mission, its values define its identity, shape how it lives its purpose and require specific behaviours to do so.

All but a few of the companies in the sample tend to have codified values that are clearly stated and communicated through their website and corporate media.

Values were grouped into 92 value categories and 11 top categories were identified based on at least 8 organisations adopting them. The value categories were plotted on a 4-quadrant graph structured around two dimensions: Inward vs. Outward Orientation of Value and Preponderance of Relationships vs. Results.

Some categories overlap with others in proportion to the number of joint ventures that carry them at the same time.

The value categories have been differentiated according to nuances. For example, the graph shows Ownership as a value category based on 14 of the 80 global organisations. Alongside this, Leadership includes a further 7, and the category Leadership, Ownership, Entrepreneurialism a further 4, making the scope of Expanded Leadership wider - up to 28, and therefore as important as Collaboration & Teamwork. The specific focus on Ownership is intended to highlight a focus on a specific characteristic of Leadership, which is detailed below.

Ownership & Expanded Leadership is the central value category to a 3 pillar system given by Integrity, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Excellence in that order, highlighting the need for leadership to balance the three actions: Belonging, Ethical Framing of Needs and Solving Customer Problems (see figure). It is worth noting that Learning & Development (Inward / Results quadrant) is present in all organisations, but only 6 out of 80 focus on it strategically (with their values and principles). This quadrant represents "growing" and is underrepresented in terms of strategic focus in the global organisations analysed (see Figure 2).

In terms of how values are managed, most global companies use values primarily in a career-related context, to attract and manage talent, and often to frame the working relationship. For some, particularly those with Asian operations and those in more regulated sectors (such as finance, but not exclusively), values take a broader perspective and are communicated to external stakeholders - consumers and shareholders.

Values shift from outcome-based to relationship-based

While in most cases each company has a specific way of defining and nuancing its principles and values, they could be grouped into 92 categories, each with some form of distinctive content.

Of these, 11 top values stand out and are shared by at least 8 of the global companies surveyed,

6 of these values are clearly in the relationship space, in terms of the dynamics and the way in which a corporate culture is expressed in the world: Integrity, DEI, Customer Focus, Collaboration & Teamwork, Accountability & Responsibility, Respect,
4 are results-oriented: Excellence, Innovation, Commitment and Sustainability,
1, Ownership (together with Expanded Leadership), is centralised and mostly outward-looking.

Integrity is the single most frequent value

Integrity in ethical decision-making, behaviour and the application of moral principles to all actions has become a key business value. "BNP Paribas lists integrity as one of its corporate strengths, while the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China states on its website that "Integrity leads to prosperity".

In focusing on integrity, 61 out of 80 companies seem to share the same view.

More often (but not always), Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Sustainability are general policies rather than values.

"Customers do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers," said Sir Richard Branson of Virgin. It seems that the vast majority of organisations have recognised this truth and implemented policies and values around wellbeing and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), with varying nuances.

DEI and sustainability policies are in place for the sample, a good proportion of the companies in the sample have included it in their core values, and for fewer than a handful DEI is the main driver of corporate value.

Some companies in the sample not only apply DEI, but also monitor the impact of their DEI framework. Siemens, one of the companies in the sample, actively embeds DEI in its values and implements value alignment in the context of performance evaluation and goal setting practices to foster greater inclusion and cohesive action.

At ServiceNow, the company has developed work personas that are communicated upfront on its website, making it clear how it will work with its future employees, who can either work flexibly, remotely or in the office, depending on business needs and the specific role.

Greater attention is being paid to wellbeing and work-life balance by the vast majority of companies in the sample.

However, despite the high profile of wellbeing and DEI at senior management level, according to the KPMG 2024 CEO Outlook report, around a third of CEOs believe there will be a complete return to the office in the next three years. According to the same study, 87% of CEOs are likely to reward employees who return to the office with better assignments, salary increases and promotions. Interestingly, according to the KPMG 2024 US CEO Outlook Pulse Survey, a third of CEOs are exploring the possibility of introducing a four-day work week.

This latter finding echoes the results of a trial in Iceland to reduce working hours between 2015 and 2019 for approximately 1% of the Icelandic workforce in a variety of workplaces, including preschools, offices, social services, and hospitals. The trial involved a reduction from a 40-hour week to a 35- or 36-hour week without a reduction in pay, and the results were very positive, with productivity remaining the same or increasing in most workplaces, workers reporting less stress, a lower risk of burnout, and an improved work-life balance. The shift to shorter working weeks has had a significant positive impact on employees, with 78% of Icelandic employees reporting satisfaction with their current working hours, 62% of those with reduced working hours being more satisfied with their working hours, and 97% of employees finding it easier or maintaining the same balance between work and private life. 42% reported less stress in their personal lives, compared with only 6% who felt it had increased. Other countries and companies have also experimented with the four-day week, with Microsoft in Japan seeing a 40% increase in productivity during their trial.

As mental health problems become more prevalent than heart disease, and are now at the top of the World Health Organisation's list of concerns, work-life balance and wellbeing practices must remain a priority for the sustainable performance of organisations and their employees.

Happy employees focus on customers in many organisation-specific ways

While all organisations want to be successful in serving their customers, some have set a clear focus by including 'customer centricity' in their core values.

The increased focus on customers is expressed in a variety of ways - customer/user centric, customer satisfaction, customer first, customer obsessed, customer success, customer focus, customer service, customer value generation, increasing customer performance, customer trust, proximity, customers/patients first, focusing on products and customers, focusing on customers, customers as north stars, delivering for customers, paying attention to customer relationships, thus providing additional insight into the specific underlying motivational drivers of the organisation - relationship, delivery, experience, to name a few.

Sustainability (as a value) is another way to show focus on customer centricity when targeting customers who are sensitive to the wider impact on society and the world.

Collaboration & Teamwork meets Excellence in delivery

Group action and the ability of individuals to succeed together are as important as excellence in delivery. "We Succeed Together", "We Work Together", "We Win Together", "We Share in the Success of Colleagues"... are some examples of how collaboration, positive communication and shared success have been reinforced among the core values.

Innovation is as important as Accountability, Responsibility and Respect...

By highlighting the importance of Accountability & Responsibility and Respect, organisations are sending a message. Innovation is no longer the only driver: a bright idea does not compensate for deceptive and disrespectful behaviour. It is not just about the what, at least not any more, it is also about the how.

... Delivery is mostly an outdated word

Not all organisations are focusing on 'delivery': other words such as 'making things happen' and 'making a difference' are replacing the hard core concept of 'delivery', thus communicating to potential employees (and wider stakeholders) a search for greater meaning and fulfilment. Another indicator of the shift in focus from the end product to the process.

Ownership emerges as the scope of Leadership expands

Global organisations show three paths to Leadership:

Some global organisations do not focus on Leadership values per se, but develop leaders over time by encouraging them to embody the strategic values that the organisation has defined.
Other organisations focus on the 'traditional' value of leadership and see leaders as leaders and influencers who represent the organisation's values to employees and the wider stakeholder community.
Finally, a cohort of global companies focus on ownership, requiring employees to own the levers of the business, extending the concept of autonomy and embodying the purpose and mission of the organisation. These companies want leading and entrepreneurial employees who are able to pay attention to their employees and to the running of the business, they want people who act as 'owners'.

The emergence of ownership, on the one hand, and the development of leadership from other shared group values, on the other, show that the focus on the traditional concept of leadership and its top-down status attributes is fading.

Group values of integration and responsibility are being taken up in the form of Accountability & Responsibility and Ownership (e.g. 'acting as an owner' and 'possessing an entrepreneurial spirit').

In today's global economy, the portrait of a global business leader is one who demonstrates the ability to take care of business ("Solutioning") with an ethical framework of behaviour ("Framing"), by ensuring the safety and security of its most valuable assets, its people, at all levels - physical, mental and financial ("Belonging" - see image below).

Values shape talent and future leaders

The dominance of the relational dimension among the top core values shows that group dynamics, group results and the ability to play the game (i.e. the process) have become more important than the end result. While the latter is a natural consequence of the process, it is also less relevant in these vulnerable times of uncertainty and complexity. An attitude that demonstrates resilience and perseverance counts, if not more, then at least as much as the timely achievement of an outcome.

The importance given to relationships demonstrates that they are the glue through which a culture comes alive. And strong relationships need glue particles to stick together.

In this landscape, future leaders will need to ensure that the best conditions are in place to enable teams to enjoy the act of doing their jobs and the content of their work, which is a component of fulfilment.

What are the determinants of values and principles?

Values and manifestos, which provide the framework for leadership and business principles and expected organisational behaviours, are not the only determinants of how they are applied in an organisation.

Greater nuance is added by the semantics attached to the values themselves, which are also, though not exclusively, linked to the original geographical and cultural origins of the organisation, which have a culturally specific understanding of these values and principles.

The sector and the extent to which it is regulated, or the type of activity it encompasses, also lends a particular flavour to the way in which a set of values is lived. Defence or luxury, FMCG or finance, ICT or pharmaceuticals have a different appetite for compliance and risk management than an unwavering pioneering spirit. These different attitudes and appetites help determine a larger business framework for how values and principles are applied in organisations across these different business sectors.

In addition, the size of the organisation determines the level of internal complexity that needs to be managed in addition to the volatile external context. Conglomerates, global organisations, local companies or start-ups operate differently in this respect. Organisations of different sizes are likely to give a different content to similar values and therefore operate them in different ways.

In addition, a company's strategic focus, whether product or process oriented, will also contribute to the organisation's value formula.

Finally, the final layer, which gives the values their actual content, comes from the way leaders and top management, with their personalities, shape them with their own appreciation, perspective and direction on how they expect the values to be lived and applied throughout the organisation.

For global organisations, leadership

Leadership moves away from ambition and power and, to some extent, the pure concept of influence. Other important dimensions emerge from the companies in the sample - Integrity, Accountability & Responsibility, Ownership and Collaboration & Teamwork, DEI and Sustainability - that need to be considered in the way leadership is developed.

The rise of Ownership and the emergence of relational dimensions (Collaboration & Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, Customer Centricity) over results-oriented approaches promises a shift in the way leadership needs to be deployed. Companies have begun to focus on owners who are courageous enough to be uncomfortable with decision making.

In terms of leadership, various personality frameworks and tools provide insight into how a shift is working and which profiles may emerge. As most global companies do not focus on leadership as an extrinsic value, but rather model leaders according to other strategic values, the most obvious shift is from an authoritative leader to one with a multi-faceted and diverse set of skills, such as Helping to set the framework and allowing autonomy as confidence grows; Ensuring that all the resources people need are available and that they feel supported; Facilitating the generation of ideas and giving progressive autonomy; Motivating and driving individual performance; Sharing progress and facilitating improvement; Encouraging and showing confidence in the potential of their people; Brainstorming and discussing solutions to challenges together; Empowering with accountability, autonomy, responsibility and confidence in the delivery of a project; Encouraging consensus and teamwork to organise joint efforts and make things happen.

In these fast paced, complex and challenging times, leaders need to develop the ability to be agile in order to continually adapt to ever changing external situations.

The fragile external context and the recognition by global organisations that businesses need to adapt to a wider range of relational needs opens the doors of leadership to profiles other than the traditional leader figure. These other leadership styles will lead and shape the strategy, business and future of global organisations in this changing environment.

For Talent Management

Values matter. In a video on the careers website of one of the global organisations included in this review, an employee explained that she felt aligned with the company and the reason was: values - "Today we have to choose based on values".

An employee whose values are not in line with those of the employer will find it difficult to fit into the organisation and will always be swimming against the current. This is a symptom when the values and the way they are lived in an organisation are not aligned with an employee's personality, values and purpose.

Values are lived in a context, and this context, i.e. the way in which values are lived in the company, organisation, units, teams and by direct colleagues, has a major impact on the experience of fulfilment at work.

According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace Report (2023), engagement depends on a variety of factors, including: sustainable and supportive social relationships at work; satisfaction with accomplishing tasks; alignment between individual and company values (not individual teams' values); management style and ability to encourage and support autonomy; opportunity to master skills and take on challenges; ability to tailor a job to individual skills; and work-life balance.

From the sample of companies analysed, leaders with high social skills will continue to rise through greater social support from the organisation, even if there is less external recognition of their unique technical skills. This shift in the way leadership is built requires a proper understanding of where to find inner confidence as a leader.

Hubspot says on their career pages, "Culture is a set of shared beliefs, values and principles. (...) We are as obsessed with our culture as we are with our products. (...) Because culture is a product. (...) Culture is the product we make for ourselves. (...) Culture is to recruiting what product is to marketing. (...) A great product attracts customers more easily. A great culture attracts great people.

That is why values matter. They are the signpost to fulfilment and whether there is a match in the professional relationship between the recruiting organisation and the candidate. And values change over time as society and generations evolve.

Company values matter, candidate values matter. And they matter far more than the technical skills for the role, which can be trained, or the soft skills, which can be developed through personal development and coaching.

It is therefore important to know and assess each party's values in advance of the hiring process to understand if there is a fit - whether full or partial.

Adherence to a set of values at one point in time is a go/no go decision for both the individual and the organisation.

Over a longer period of time, values can change, either in the organisation or in society (i.e. at the individual level). There can be a disconnect, especially when it comes to managing the existing base of older and newer generations of employees.

Values are important, but they are not the only determinant of employee fulfilment. While the Gallup report highlights how values ensure a supportive work environment, emotional comfort with the organisation's leadership, fulfilment comes from the ability to accomplish tasks, master skills, create a job and balance work and life. Career development plans and the possibility of integrating work and life needs' help to maintain an employee's motivation in time and contribute, in a triad, to determining the compatibility between individual and company needs.

For Start-ups

Values and principles form the basis of the company's mission and the expected behaviour of its employees.

While start-ups are born out of a spark of enthusiasm based on the connection between a market insight and the founders' dream of solving a problem in society, these companies should not overlook the need to define a foundation of values and principles in order to attract talent that can embody the company's mission and thus become the future leaders of the company over time.

Why values and how to work with them?

As mentioned above, values are the foundational aspect of a company's and individual's identity, helping to define and nurture the company's mission and purpose.

For individuals, defining their own core and aspirational values allows them to become aware of their decision-making process, to define the most effective and authentic ways of being and acting in their professional and personal lives, and to make choices that are more in tune with their unique essence, where the roots of their fulfilment needs lie.

The same is true for companies. Within organisations, values can be defined overall, but also at sub-levels in departments, units, teams, to allow individuals and the organisational systems they operate to increase communication, collaboration and, ultimately, productivity. Coaching tools exist and have been proven to be useful in this regard and can support the company's mission to be lived with purpose at every level of the organisation.

In the event of a shift in corporate values or a disconnect with older or newer generations, values work through team coaching can help reconnect individual and corporate values and ease the cultural transition.

What about fulfilment at Amazon?

At the time of writing, Amazon has announced a reduction of 14,000 jobs by the end of 2024, in management positions, to streamline operations, improve decision-making and reduce bureaucracy, as Andy Jassy explained in his memo last September. From 350,000 employees at the beginning of 2023, Amazon is currently streamlining to just over 300,000 employees. The company is currently recruiting for 20,489 positions (6.3% of its net headcount), which is slightly higher than its non-regretted attrition rate (6%).

The most sought-after roles are in software development (17%), operations, IT & support engineering (9%), sales, promotion & account management (9%); project/programme/product management non-technical (8%); fulfilment & operations management (6%); project/programme/product management technical (6%).

As the company replaces talent and streamlines its corporate structure to maintain agility despite its size, the question remains - how to find fulfilment despite Amazon's 5 RTO policy?

In his memo to Amazon employees, Andy Jassy writes: "Our culture is unique" and "Having the right culture at Amazon is something I don't take for granted".

Amazon's culture is based on customer obsession. That means occupying every available shelf space as quickly and aggressively as possible. Being able to be both aggressive and powerful at the same time requires compactness.

Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people. With the size of a giant ship and the need for agility, it needs people who can move smaller boats quickly and make decisions on the fly. The company needs a lean headquarters and an army of small units going everywhere: while the land lines conquer the earth's surfaces, the sea team is out to discover the waste ocean of business, with divers diving deep and the navy reporting back quickly on discoveries and lessons learned, scrapping unsuccessful trials quickly and limiting emotional ties to sunk costs and losses.

What happens at Amazon's does not just affect the company. Given the size of the ship, Amazon cannot afford to take on water. So again, what does it mean to find fulfilment with this company?

Based on the assessment of the value categories in the sample of global companies, Amazon shows a narrower focus of the categories, tilted towards the "Solutioning" quadrant. It is the only company to have the 5 values of customer focus, collaboration, excellence, innovation and finally ownership, and the only one to focus on frugality, while sharing the focus on learning and development with a few other global organisations.

With ownership and innovation at the heart of its value system, Amazon does not ask its employees to embody values, but rather the company's mission - to own the ambition to make customers' lives easier.

Given this framework, what is the portrait of the fulfilled 'Amazonian'? The 'Amazonian':

Is customer obsessed
Has diverse backgrounds, experiences and areas of expertise to drive innovation
Possesses an innovative mindset
Is learning oriented
Is a builder, creating and developing new solutions - whether systems or services
Is a visionary, thinking big and looking decades ahead
Adaptable to different roles and responsibilities and collaborative
Has a 'total ownership' mentality and is a passionate individual who is fulfilled by the act of fulfilment itself.

Fulfilment at Amazon can be found by those who do not see themselves as the company's customers, but rather as unwavering pioneers, who exercise total ownership, who have the mental and physical resources to maintain peak performance and speed over time, and who know how and when to pace resources in a complex and dominant organisation dealing with an increasingly complex and volatile environment.

Among the sample of companies analysed, Amazon is an outlier in the way it lives its culture - in Andy Jassy's own words, unique.

Value congruence, employee well-being and corporate toxicity

At its simplest level, congruence is defined as the ability of an organisation or individual to 'walk the talk', i.e. to actively seek and implement actions that are consistent with stated values and principles. Congruence is a critical factor in creating trust in a relationship and in a team. At an organisational level, it helps to set clear expectations.

One theme that emerged during the writing of this report is the extent to which managers should be effective ambassadors of an organisation's culture, and the challenges they face in doing so. Team leaders are the key component and connector for communicating and living the culture within teams. As Gallups states: "Managers are the lynchpin that holds your teams together". An organisation needs to identify the most effective ways for managers to fulfil their relational mission.

Conversely, toxicity is fuelled by a lack of trust and is driven by three factors: toxic leadership (micromanagement, bullying, lack of clear direction and inconsistent application of policies), toxic social norms and behaviours (gossip, exclusion, negativity and ineffective communication, unhealthy competition) and poor work design (excessive workload, unrealistic expectations, conflicting job demands; source: Business Insider).

Values and principles are defined to run a business effectively and successfully and provide a framework for partnership with the contributors to the business - an organisation's employees.

In terms of designing effective and productive ways of working, remote working emerges as increasing both individual isolation and disconnection from the corporate culture (sources: Journal of Business Psychology, Gallup). While the hybrid work mode is established as the most effective and accepted by employees, the connection to a company's mission and purpose decreases for hybrid and remote positions from 26% in 2019 to 28% in 2023, according to Gallup. The same source highlights the challenge of supporting hybrid (middle) managers, who experience the highest rates of burnout.

Organisational leaders need to define how to effectively implement values in the context of work policies, and address this complex challenge by considering the overall long-term operational sustainability with current changing work behaviours.

Conclusions

Values and principles are a key driver in defining corporate identity and behaviour. 11 value categories emerged from the study of 80 leading global organisations, highlighting the expansion of values into integrity and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Amazon's decision to revert to a 5-day RTO work policy has provoked strong reactions from the global marketplace, as it appears to be at odds with current trends and preferences for hybrid work to maintain a better work-life balance for employees.

Research by Gallup shows that hybrid work poses challenges to middle management, increasing burnout and decreasing connection to a company's culture and mission. On the other hand, experience in Ireland and at Microsoft has shown that productivity levels remain stable with a 4-day week. The intersection of both needs - greater balance for employees and connection/productivity for organisations - seems to point to a flexibility ratio of at least 4 to 1.

Organisational congruence is a driver of trust, effective social norms and behaviours, and effective work design. In times of transformation and adaptation to complex, changing environments, values help organisations to take action. The debate on Amazon's decision raises the question of whether the contextual implementation of a highly flexible mode of work during the pandemics, without integration at the level of corporate values and principles, requires adherence to these or calls for their reassessment and redefinition.

Values are an essential component in defining the identity and direction of individuals and many organisations. Current and potential employees need to carefully consider the alignment of their individual values with their current and future employers, and the implementation of these values within an organisation, as this is the core path to fulfilment.

Eulalia Codipietro

Bestselling Author I Consultant I Coach I Creative

Enjoy. Empower. Express. Engage. Expand.

Notes - Facts about Amazon

Summary Facts & Statistics

Founded in 1995
2nd largest employer in the world after Walmart (1,551,000 employees as of Sept 2024)
24th best company to work for according to Forbes (2024 Best Companies), 3.6 rating on Glassdoor
Profit per employee at about the same level as in launch year (around USD 30,000, about four times Walmart's)
Strong revenue, profit per profit, across all businesses, with AWS the strongest and e-commerce the largest part of the business
Operating expenses and cost efficiency are priorities, especially in terms of organisational design (flat model), warehousing with automation and robotics.

E-commerce marketplace

Amazon has a 37.8% share of the retail e-commerce market. The company lists more than 353 million products. 92% of online shoppers have bought an item from Amazon. Amazon averages $1.29 billion in daily sales (2023).
Key competitors in the online marketplace space: Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Flipkart, Target, Alibaba Group, Otto, JD, Netflix, Rakuten, plus Temu and Shein (for the sub-$20 segment).
Latest news from 14 November 2024: launch of Haul to challenge Temu and Shein in the under $20 segment.

Amazon sellers

There are approximately 9.7 million Amazon sellers worldwide.
Of these, approximately 1.9 million sellers are actively selling on the platform.
The United States has the largest number of Amazon sellers at approximately 1.1 million.

AWS customers

The AWS cloud has more than 30% of the market share for cloud systems, which is almost as much as Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud platform combined.
AWS tends to focus on start-ups, with start-ups and SMBs being the fastest growing customer segment, with a year-on-year growth rate of 42.2%.
Some of the largest AWS customers based on estimated monthly spend include Sony ($11 million), Adobe ($7.5 million), Facebook ($5.6 million), Johnson & Johnson ($5 million), and Netflix ($2.4 million).

Amazon e-commerce users

Amazon has more than 310 million active users worldwide.
Approximately 230 million Amazon customers are from the US.
By 2024, there will be an estimated 168.3 million Amazon Prime members in the United States.
Globally, the total number of Amazon Prime members is expected to be around 231 million.

These statistics demonstrate Amazon's massive scale across its e-commerce platform, seller ecosystem and cloud services business. The company continues to dominate online retail and cloud computing, serving millions of customers, sellers and businesses worldwide.

Sources

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/fulfillment

https://www.hrdive.com/news/amazon-employees-return-to-office/728402/

https://fortune.com/2024/09/30/amazon-5-day-in-office-mandate-blind-surveyed-staffers-consider-quitting/

https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage

www.stockanalysis.com

https://www.hrdive.com/news/amazon-employees-return-to-office/728402/

https://developmentco.com/amazon-reverts-to-5-day-workweek-what-does-it-mean-for-employees/

https://fortune.com/2024/09/24/amazon-employee-survey-rto-5-day-mandate-andy-jassy/

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/nvidia-stock-investors-just-got-great-news-amazon-and-google

https://www.businessinsider.com/aws-negotiating-huge-cloud-deal-supply-ibm-with-nvidia-gpus-2024-11

https://www.shopify.com/blog/amazon-competitors