Interacting with celebrated artists gives employees the chance to land some interesting opportunities to expand their circle.

 In lieu of the pandemic, keeping employee engagement, motivation and morale high has become imperative. Now more than ever, to enhance the workplace culture, companies are curating unique employee initiatives and programs that involve employees to engage with each other and discover new talents, to upskill. To align to this, Amazon launched two key initiatives – ‘Fish Bowl’ and ‘Legends of Rhythm’ which aims to provide its employees with a platform and ecosystem to interact, engage and participate within the in-house talent show

Through the remote working scenario, companies have found themselves looking at ways to create an inter-connected environment. Can you throw light on how Amazon tackled this? 

Through the pandemic, we have been cognizant of the unique challenges faced by our people and have extended our best possible support to help employees navigate the difficult times. Employees in roles that can effectively be done from home are encouraged to work remotely. With Amazon always enabling a connected working environment, we have been able to create a smooth transition into the remote working model as well as maintain the synergy within teams. Even before the pandemic hit us, we had teams operating in a virtual set up and had done number of experiments such as virtual contact center, away teams, etc. to allow flexibility to our people.

Multiple tech-enabled tools and platforms for virtual meetings, project collaborations, information wikis, wellness programs and employee engagement initiatives etc., have helped teams maintain productivity levels, across the board. We resorted to technology to have engagement platforms, knowledge sharing avenues, so that employees can connect with larger teams with ease. We also aided the right environment for our employees by providing infrastructural support and facilities for higher efficiency at work. 

What is remarkable is that Amazon employees also stepped up to help colleagues in need. As the second wave of COVID started to peak in late April, we quickly mobilized a self-organized group of motivated employee volunteers (called COVID Warriors) who showed incredible compassion and grit helping colleagues and their families in distress. These COVID warriors dealt with critical, time-sensitive requests like hospital bed search, oxygen support, etc. for Amazonians and their family members. We had 1000 such COVID Warriors across 30 cities, and they played a critical role in holding the employee spirits and morale in tact in some extremely challenging circumstances. Further, virtual gatherings and interactions, all-hands meetings also helped teams to stay connected with each other and the leadership. 

At Amazon, while the health, safety and well-being of our employees continues to be our top-most priority, we also ensure that employee morale is high and run various initiatives that enable them to interact with each other. We are amazed to see the commitment from our employees who have continued to deliver value to our customers.

What was the inspiration behind ‘Fishbowl’ and ‘Legends of Rhythm (LOR)? How many editions of Fishbowl have you launched till now?

To enable and foster an inter-connected workplace, it is important to provide employees dedicated forums for recreation ; and this has become especially critical in the pandemic-induced remote working set-up where lines between work and personal life have blurred to a large extent.

One of the unique experiences of ‘The Amazonian Life’ is the accessibility to a large-scale ecosystem of integrated platforms and businesses such as Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Amazon Publishing (Westland), Alexa and various others. We decided to leverage this reach to curate various unique initiatives that enable employees to not only showcase their talent but also interact and learn from  celebrities and artists to hone their passions, get a first-hand mentorship and excel at their hobbies. In this virtual world, these avenues were also extended to employees’ family to make sessions as a watch-party.

For instance, Fishbowls is one of our marquee internal event where we invite authors, celebrities or artists across industries who have partnered with Amazon entities, be it for movies, music, TV series or books, to interact with Amazonians in a chat-show format. We have hosted guests like Ruskin Bond, Priyamani, R Madhavan, Pankaj Tripathi, Gul Panag, and seen great participation from employees where they witness interesting trivia, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and get to interact with some of their favorite artists. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have organized six Fishbowl sessions where we have had over  5000 employees attend each of these virtual sessions. 

Similarly, in 2020, we launched a virtual talent hunt initiative that encourages employees to participate and showcase their talent across dance, music, comedy, and arts, where the performance entries are judged by prominent artists. In the first season, taking a cue from the lockdown, we named the talent show ‘Lockdown Legends’ which enabled employees to record and submit videos of them singing. We received more than 600 entries and great participation from teams who stepped up to vote and make their favorites win. The final performances were mentored by the famous playback singer, Benny Dayal which raised the enthusiasm of all employees. This was followed up by a season 2 called ‘Legends of Dance’, where employee finalists were mentored by Remo D’Souza, India’s top-most choreographer. The third season, called Legends of Rhythm is currently underway and has invited entries from employees to display their talent in music. For the grand finale of this season, we have lined up a performance by the famous singer, Raghu Dixit and a superstar duo – Vishal & Shekhar. 

We have witnessed a stellar response from the employees, with over 500 entries received for each season of this initiative. The voting and polling aspect of these shows have allowed employees to collaborate beyond their teams and interact with different individuals. 

At Amazon, we are aware of the wealth of experience and the plurality of perspectives brought about by our diverse workforce and strive to create a culture that fosters inter-team connectivity.  

In the work-from-home model of working, how easy/difficult has it been to sustain the employee interest and participation in virtual programs? 

Through the pandemic, we stepped up to take many of our celebrated internal employee engagement initiatives to the virtual format. Interestingly, the responses have been encouraging, right from all-hands meetings to wellness webinars. To give a perspective of the interest virtual events have received, virtual editions of Fishbowl have seen more than 10x participation from employees vis-à-vis physical events. We sustain employees’ interest by bringing them topical subjects and celebrities to interact with them. 

Employees have appreciated these formats since these sessions can be attended from anywhere, anytime!  This also enabled more global leaders and employees to host and participate in sessions.

What was the seeding thought behind setting up employee chat show with renowned celebrities? Has celebrity integration helped to boost the morale of employees and sustained their enthusiasm? How have employees benefitted via interacting with celebrities?

At Amazon, we take pride in hiring talent from all walks of life across various roles such as corporate, technology, customer service, and operations. Our employees not only bring expertise in the field of their work but also harbor various talents, hobbies and interests outside of work. As an organization, we are constantly innovating on ways to enhance employee experience at Amazon. In order to encourage employees to pursue their hobbies and bring their whole-selves to work, we leveraged our integrated network of resources and curated programs where we invite renowned personalities to host, judge and mentor our employees basis their interest. 

These personalities are shortlisted based on the nature of the program and employees play an integral role in choosing our guest. We conduct internal surveys to understand which personality and artist is most popular among employees and whose mentorship would they really aspire for an initiative like ‘Legends of Rhythm’. This also encourages them to participate in the show themselves, display their best talent forward, and get a chance to receive one-on-one guidance from their favorite artists. 

Further, interacting with celebrated artists also gives employees the chance to land some interesting opportunities to expand their circle. One of our top contenders for this year’s Legends of Rhythm has already got the opportunity to perform alongside Raghu Dixit himself, and this has in turn fetched him five more external opportunities to perform. Opportunities like these serve as a great boost for employees to excel in their passion areas beyond work. 

Since the launch of these initiatives, what has the employee response been? Have you seen an increase in participation for virtual programs? 

At Amazon, we make deliberate efforts to continuously enhance our employees’ interaction and experience with the company. Since the launch of these virtual programs, we have seen a positive response from employees across the board. Employees have become an integral part of these programs – from selecting the celebrity to voting and participating in the show. Across  the three seasons of the talent hunt initiative, we have seen 1500+ entries showcasing their talent. The level of engagement that these numbers depict is, in itself, a reflection of how well the initiatives are accepted by the employees.