Staff. Beths colletti is the Senior Vice President for worldwide Human Resources at amazon. They are going to be interviewed by nikki waller from the wall street journal. Please welcome them. [applause] we are going to do some case studies, and we have a short amount of time. Quickly, lets bring everybody up to speed. First, beth, everybody here caught the headlines about the 7 million amazon plans to spend to upscale workers. To us a quick overview. Facts,ou got the basic 700 million, 100,000 workers over the next six years. Aggregation of a series of different upscaling programs, starting with Fulfillment Center workers. Our frontline workers where we give them a program where they prepay even before they start their classes, 90 of tuition and books so that they can learn skills in things like medical things that will train them for jobs outside of amazon purity is a unique program because we realize that amazon may be one step in their career path. In addition, we have programs like our Machine Learning they take, where Software Developers and they recognize that Machine Learning is such an important skill that we need to help them get the skills they did not get when they went to college. Folks that have a stem background and helping them become developers. We have other programs for frontline workers where we teach them the Technical Skills to go from being a warehouse worker to an i. T. Technician. That is a subset of them but we have a whole series to hit that 100,000 number over the next six years. You reimagine how the Community Colleges in chicago would function. Give us a 32nd tour of that. Chicago has the most diversified economy in the united states, no sector runs more than 14 . The Second Largest CommunityCollege System in america. Campuses, each campus had an industry focus. Care, digital manufacturing, etc. We brought the industry that what higher in and we would do curriculum to oversee all of health care from Home Health Care to nurses, emt, physical therapy, everything. Basically that school became an expert in that area of specialty in the industry and focus. The second thing is, and this is part of it, we set up in the city of chicago, we went from 300,000 to 500,000 kids graduating from high school with a minimum, basically 50 of the kids graduated with a minimum of a semester of College Education already under their belt. If you get a b average in high school in chicago, you get free Community College. One of the reasons we wanted to do it is we could guarantee employees relocating, kellogg, diversity of wisconsin, malcolm x, the right Community College, certainty of the workforce is more likely. In seven years, chicago is the number one city for corporate relocations in america. In addition is the social and political view, which is everyone in the room is doing well under the economy, and if we dont get more people and the Winners Circle in the economy, the gig is up. Sure we have the chance, that they see an economy where they have a future. If you do that, you will have a political and economic stable system, and i believe employers cannot prosper just on our fouryear institutions. I think that was like 70 seconds. The elevator stopped at the 14th floor. The things that has been transformative in chicago is you had Companies Come in and teaching the classes. Mr. Emmanuel it was not easy, a lot of the teachers were not happy with it, but you had a board of advisors made up of the corporations. Was 120, 130 corporations that served at different institutions, not mandating, but saying if you want us to hire take an i. T. School, they were hiring zero and now they take 300 annually. They know the curriculum meets the basics. You are not going to do super to nuts. A the institution has to do the fundamentals. Bit about howle those of you in these programs are predicting the future a the obit. The front page of the journal has a great story about manufacturing jobs require degrees now. Four out of five jobs now require some kind of degree. All kinds of sectors in the economy are changing. How are you choosing the skills that you want to focus on for the future . How are you predicting and modeling at amazon . The most consistent thing we see that is changing is the need for some level of technical skill in any job. Our Fulfillment Center workers, they are working with new systems, new processes. They need some aspect of Technical Skills. When weidentified look historically over the past 20 years, we identified that 15 years ago, we had about nine jobs. Skill titles. Now we have 37. When i look at the past five years, rules by data scientists and different security engineers , those roles have grown by 500 within the company. It is just explosive than the technical side, so we need to find ways to give those skills to the breadth of employees we have in ways that will allow them to evolve as the environment evolves. As you said, and this is revolutionary probably to a lot of men and women here, you are paying people to learn how to get jobs beyond amazon, but some of those people are Grocery Store cashiers and warehouse workers for whom automation is a reality. Finding isre automation is in no way replacing jobs, but what we do need four people working in our warehouses and Fulfillment Centers, they do need to be able to interact with that automation. Their systems change, we actually have some interesting programs using Machine Learning to help them learn quickly on the job. We have Gaming Technology so we can have them learn through games, and we make it fun. In chicago, how are you thinking about automation . Our motto at the Community Colleges was you are not going to get a job, youre going to get a career. You may go into health care and the foundation for nursing, but it would take you an advanced degree in nursing, so it was not just about nursing, it was about health care as a space. Second is you have to really rethink we are all talking about the associates agree. That is really about 40 of the population of the Community College anywhere in america. The other 20 is getting a ged, and the other 40 are working and then scaling up while theyre working. All 85,000 are working on their twoyear degree, etc. Alice harvey on the Southeast Side of the city, we made it, built a whole new campus, rebuilt all these campuses. Whole Foods Distribution Center for the entire midwest left indiana and moved their facility literally three blocks away from alice harvey Community College. Indiana, you could argue, much better workers comp laws than illinois, much lower tax rates than illinois. They left but came here. Why . They needed certainty around the talent pool. That is the biggest hussle going on right now in the economy, not only the skill set, but the certainty around that skill set. The Community College system handled the 40 going for the Associates Degree but also for the companies, the ability to have workers come in and out of the system and either take just the class or get what we call stackable certificates in the economy. There would be 16 weeks and you would get this certificate that gives you the breadth to handle the economy and navigate it and you dont have to get the twoyear degree. You just need 16 weeks, 18 weeks in this circuit. We call them stackable degrees or stackable certificates that allow people to work up, skill up, and advance economically and get the economic independence they needed for a career, not just a job. One of the things i know was on the minds of a lot of people they dont have the money to spend on training and are very worried about it might not work out. What assumption where the operating assumption going in did not turn out to be correct and how did you course correct . Its a lot of money for any of us to invest in these upscaling programs. It is important to make sure we get the results, so theres a few things we do on the front end, and i will share with you where we have had to evolve our thinking as well. We look for four key things when we start these programs. First is we have to meet employees where they are. We have to find ways to is moved to remove as much friction as possible for employees to be able to access the information. We actually build classrooms in the Fulfillment Center. We build them behind glass walls so their peers can see them do it, but they do not have to commute. Virtual training is another great way to do it. Virtual access. Weond big thing we do is build these programs by amazonians for amazonians, so we make sure we are connecting with the population we are actually serving, by having our own employee is designed and developed programs, they are the insure they will develop something that makes sense for the people they work with. Third thing we are doing is pilots and experience as you mentioned, we start small. Every program we do we start very small and only once we prove it is doing well do we double down and take it big. We started our career choice in education, certificates, partnerships with Community Colleges to get jobs outside of amazon. Where we failed was we looked broadly across the country to see what was in demand jobs, and we offered to prepay the training for those jobs, but guess what . Nobody straining to be an Aircraft Mechanic, but you work in an area where theres no Aircraft Mechanic jobs, so you have to relocate. We had to curate our programs down so not only were we offering programs and prepaying tuition for the employees for in demand jobs, we had to make sure they were in demand jobs in the communities in which they live. Once we saw that, then we realized we could double down on it and go really big. We talked on the phone the other day, and i asked you how Companies Like the ones here can work with their local city, their region, and you basically set unless they live in a place like chicago, they are out of luck. Other ideas . I will stick with what i said. No, first of all, i think you listen, i will say this. When i started had never been to a Community College. I made it my mission i couldnt now get companies to leave, meaning break off their relationship with Community College. Your hr is looking at all the fouryear institutions within a 200mile radius. The Community College almost 60 , a little over, have to use the g. I. Bill to go to Community Colleges. I think you have the possibility of a renaissance for our Community College system. Chicago ise level, unique because it ran its own system. Was the lasthen time they recruited or went and talked about the Academic Program in a Community College in the area. If you do that, you will see they can actually reprogram and im not saying take it over, but the fundamentals for making sure the education and the what your matches industry, not your company specifically, want. You can also develop a relationship where youre are using newou machinery, where they can get trained specifically on what you are about to have, but if you dont have that relationship, you should. Go do all the recruitment you want at the big ten universities, all those 30 orn chicago, about 40 of the kids are children of immigrants. You get a child of an immigrant family that came to america and i will get you a hardworking, dedicated, loyal thats true also of all americans, the workforce. If you knock on the door, you will be amazed how quickly it will open. I have a question for you and we are going to switch gears real quick. Rahm a couplesk of political questions. You have about 600 engineers working on the people team. Can you share some insights they have helped you unearth on your workforce, things other companies here might not know. Its a great question. We invest within the Hr Organization in a very large tech team. It has gone higher than 600 now, and they develop the products or our employees. Probably the biggest learning weve had for the process is it is important to look at what you do for your employees, like you do any other business problem that you work with. When we are looking at what we need to do for employees, we have to have the right data, the right metrics. We use scientists to help us figure out what will matter the most, and we use it to learn things, for example what is motivating to an amazonian, for our company, what makes them come to work, what makes them want to stay at work. We did an interesting find recently, where we thought and i think traditional leadership books would tell you the one thing that causes a employee to stay or leave is their manager. At our company, certainly that has an influence, but at our ableny, it is if they are to see the impact they are having. We will lose employees if we do not satisfy that need much faster than if they are working for a manager they may not get along with as well. Guess i will ask these questions of both of you. You have been talking a little bit about the elections, who you like. I have some targeted questions for you. I have some broadbased answers for you. [laughter] thats how this works. You worked with Elizabeth Warren in your time at the white house. Not make her would a good president . Rule for chief executive mayor, governor, president you got to be idealistic enough to know why you doing what youre doing and ruthless enough to get it done. A lot of history is written about this person, they were political, etc. If you make it to the oval, you have to have that skill set, and i think Elizabeth Warren has an idea and a philosophy and an approach, but shes also and when i say tough enough, knows where to trim her sales, where hold and fold. Same question but for biden. [sigh] then i get two more minutes on the universities of chicago. I used to say if we knew in the first year of the first term what we knew by the first year of the second term, we would all be geniuses when i worked for president clinton. Take a look at bush 41. Theres a learning curve, but the closer you are to understanding the way the oval office operates, and i think a President Biden would have exactly what i talk about. He has a vision and the capacity if you thought about the other end of pennsylvania avenue, to make that work. You can have all the ideas, but if you dont know how to move the country and the legislative body, which are two different degrees in gear shifts, you cannot be an effective chief executive, and i do not think chief executive the way you are thinking about it, different from ceo of a private company. Totally different. They are not even close. Ande, he has that capacity, he is not scared obviously, i know the Vice President better than i know senator warren. One of the things key for a president is not being scared for people to look you in the face and say no, and im fortunate to have worked with , im notdents intimidated and say in saying what i think to a president , and biden is not scared of people who tell him know to his face. Otherwise, hes just going to have a bunch of yes people, and if you look at today, i think you know what the consequences of that r. With that i was just getting comfortable i was just getting warmed up on that part. Im not really comfortable being cut off now. Ceo of the Ohio State Medical Center and chancellor for health affairs, question for beth do you see the Pipeline Program as an asset for hr or a point of entry for amazon into higher education, which has been doing things quite consistently for quite a while . The Pipeline Program, you mean the one i was describing . When i say Pipeline Program for us, Career Choice Program is one that allows us to attract and retain great employees because people see that they can come to amazon and have an opportunity to grow with amazon in ways that can follow their own passions. Got a great example of a woman who did not go into health care, but she went into aerospace engineering, started in one of our dallas Fulfillment Centers, worked there three years, then decided she wanted to take on something different, which happens to many of us in our careers. She went to the local Community College, was able to get a certification. As soon as she completed her certification, she had a job right there in dallas to move her on. I think it is both an attraction to bring people to the company and also something that allows a pipeline for other industries and other companies. Other questions . I see one over here . Yes, right here. The civility and respect have disappeared from our [inaudible] the last few years. What do you think we can do to for eachhe respect others point of view and become a little more kind and civil to own other, but yet have our point of view . You can go to help. You can go to hell no, that hows that for a beginning . You want to hug now . Used to say is middle children wrote a book, war or peace, we can do either one. Im go