Lights out after 6 pm: Amazon India's Amit Agarwal tells employees

In an email sent to senior team members he has asked employees to allocate enough time for themselves apart from work

Amazon may be getting brickbats globally for its not-so-friendly employee policies, but in India the world’s largest online retailer is trying to build a different image as it looks to motivate the workforce ahead of the challenge of taking on Walmart.

In an email sent to senior team members this week, Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has asked employees to allocate enough time for themselves apart from work and maintain a healthy “work-life harmony”. 

The email, which has been reviewed by Business Standard, says employees are not expected to take calls or respond to emails after working hours and no business decision should be made between 6 pm and 8 am. Situations that require urgent response would be left to an individual’s judgement, he added.

Amit Agarwal, Amazon India head

“We will have occasions and commitments that require us to actually want to be engaged at odd hours, and even over multiple days. That is what owners do - step up and do what it takes. But by not making this our normal day, we will actually enjoy these moments,” he wrote. He went on to ask employees to be more sensitive while making comments such as ‘half day leave’ and ‘first shift’ about someone who might be taking early leave. Moreover, he asked them to steer away from forming negative perceptions around employees availing of flexible working hours or work-from-home. When someone is taking ‘time off’, he or she should ensure that they make it a proper ‘time off’ as it isn’t “cool” to respond to emails while on leave, he said. 

“The above mentioned norms are intended to make us more effective and efficient,” he wrote in his closing statement in the email, the news of which spread like wildfire across Amazon’s India offices. Amazon’s new liberal employee policies in India, however, contradict the global narrative that the company is a hard taskmaster to its employees, often demanding that they go above and beyond to ensure that the job is done. The Seattle-headquartered company is fighting several lawsuits in the US and Europe over employee mistreatment, especially those who work in its giant warehouses.

Earlier this year, an undercover reporter from The Sun in the UK reported that warehouse workers urinated into bottles out of fear of being punished for taking “comfort breaks”. A survey of workers revealed that walking to and from the toilets at the company’s huge warehouses would cause them to miss their steep targets.

Just this month an Amazon employee in Texas claimed that she was living out of her car after being evicted from her house for falling back on her rent. In a video, she claimed that she was injured on the job but wasn’t offered adequate compensation for treatment, which led to her missing targets and being penalised by the company.

Global reports suggest that there are many instances where even its white collar employees have been mistreated.  However, in India, this narrative seems to be lost. In the most recent LinkedIn survey of best companies to work for in India in 2018, Amazon placed fourth, just below rivals Flipkart and Paytm.

A balancing act 

This is what Amazon India head Amit Agarwal has told the company’s employees:

• No emails, phone calls after work hours
• Working from home should not be perceived negatively
• Responding to emails while on holiday “not cool”
• No business decision to be taken between 6pm and 8am