Amazon has a big problem, with attrition costing the company $8 billion a year, with the company’s “regretted attrition” off the charts.
Reports have been surfacing for some time that Amazon has a personnel problem. Reports surfaced in May that Amazon’s “regretted attrition,” the term for losing employees a company wants to keep, doubled over last year. According to an exclusive new report by Engadget, the issue is now costing Amazon some $8 billion a year.
Sources provided Engadget with documents marked “Amazon Confidential” that detailed the scope of the company’s attrition issues:
“[Worldwide] Consumer Field Operations is experiencing high levels of attrition (regretted and unregretted) across all levels, totaling an estimated $8 billion annually for Amazon and its shareholders,” one document states.
The problem is severe enough that “regretted attrition” far outpaces “unregretted attrition,” the term for people being laid off or fired.
“Regretted attrition occurs twice as often as unregretted attrition across all levels and businesses,” continues the paper. The paper also “indicates regretted attrition [represents] a low of 69.5% to a high of 81.3% across all levels (Tier 1 through Level 10 employees) suggesting a distinct retention issue.”
Even worse for the company, “only one out of three new hires in 2021” stayed with the company for more than 90 days.
What’s interesting, in the wake of this report, is Amazon’s efforts to thin its employee numbers through attrition. The company revealed in August that it was using attrition to reduce its headcount by 100,000. One can’t help but wonder if Amazon would have been better off retraining some of those individuals and moving them into other roles since it clearly has a hard time attracting and keeping new talent.
Many companies are struggling with employee retention. The pandemic forever changed the nature of the workforce, with many employees demanding more freedom and flexibility than ever before. Amazon’s issues, however, are far worse than the industry average, and there doesn’t appear to be a solution in sight.