"Safe Place To Fail, Get Back"

Deepti Varma's 23-year work journey transcending several industries like pharmaceuticals, IT and manufacturing -- she has shaped the HR culture at organisations like Dr Reddy's Laboratories, NIIT and Unitech -- has shaped her as a complete HR professional, with thorough understanding of all aspects of HR function. At Amazon, with which she has been associated since more than eight years, she has completely aligned her goals with those of the organisation, especially when it comes to inclusion and diversity.

A highly-driven professional, she attributes her growth and learning curve to the organisation that to her organisation, saying, "At Amazon, you are an owner. You have the freedom to experiment, and it’s a safe space to fail and get back again and take on newer opportunities, where the sky is the limit! This really resonated with my DNA. We are in a business that impacts the lives of so many people across the globe each day. That drives me to work harder each day so that we can touch the lives of millions of customers every day and make a difference."

She further says, "Amazon is a great training ground to build several skills. The opportunity to work with global leaders and great minds has shaped my thinking and ability to think outside the box. As a person, I love speed and innovation, and at Amazon I am able to find that space. Amazon has helped me resonate with the leadership principles (LPs)."

And she emphasises, the organisational work ethos flows from founder Jeff Bezos' dream for Amazon to emerge as the 'Earth’s Best Employer'.

Innovative Hiring

Describing the organisation's goals towards which she is working, Varma describes, "At Amazon, we strive to excel in all areas to make it the best place to work for our employees, partners, and customers. Diversity and inclusion are a shared responsibility across business functions and employee groups, which allows us to scale. A diverse workforce fosters new ways of thinking and innovation and helps us reach out to a wider range of customers.

Elaborating on the talent acquisition and retention strategy, Varma shares, "We always try to do something innovative that helps the employee experience get better, but at the same time, provide them with the relevant information. We launched Alexa to onboard employees, and we started an experiment where we used Alexa to get people to understand some of the answers that they had and not entirely rely on their managers. We focus on being a company for builders that is conducive to innovation."

Best Employer Dream

To fulfil Bezos' dream, a set of principles have been framed, the first principle encouraging leaders to lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. The second principle — success and scale bring broad responsibility — reminds leaders to be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of their actions and to be accountable to local communities, the planet, and future generations.

Varma elaborates that leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher-performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. "They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next?

Employee Safety First

The litmus test for leaders' empathy quotient came during Covid and Varma describes how the organisation dealt with the crisis. "To deal with the increased stress levels during Covid-19, Amazon introduced Project Harmony, allocating buddies for every team to enable employees to interact with others to understand what they were going through, share experiences, give, and receive tips on better work-life harmony, and learn how to handle stress. This had a huge impact. We also launched a wellness app for employees."

Shedding light on work from home during the pandemic, she says, "Despite the challenging situation, we were nimble and quick to react, which helped us optimise process efficiency and the employee/candidate experience. The WFH concept was not new to us, in fact, we had pioneered the WFH concept with virtual roles and remote working even before Covid had started with the Virtual Contact Centre (VCC), where people can work from their homes. Hence, we were better prepared to tackle the virtual transformation.

" We also covered Covid-19 vaccine cost for its associates, associates, sellers, network of delivery service partners, employees and their eligible dependents. We introduced extensive safety measures along with other financial support initiatives including comprehensive support mechanisms for employees and Covid-19 health insurance cover completely free of cost for registered sellers amongst other initiatives. We set up Amazon Relief Fund and Partner Support Fund for its operation partner network. We emerged stronger and more connected while we had each other’s backs, and this spirit from Day 1 is what we stand for."