Amazon has been named as one of the top 75 UK employers in the Social Mobility Employer Index 2023.
The Social Mobility Employer Index is an annual benchmarking and assessment tool for employers, showing how they perform in eight areas of employer-led social mobility. These include the company’s outreach work with young people from underserved communities, their efforts to engage staff and suppliers in social mobility efforts, and the pathways they create to ensure barriers to progression are removed for employees from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
“We are delighted to be recognised as one of the top employers in the Social Mobility Employer Index 2023,” said Catherine Hearn, Amazon’s HR Country Lead, UK. “We believe that success and scale bring broad responsibility, and we are committed to playing our part in creating a fairer society for everyone.
"We believe that success and scale bring broad responsibility, and we are committed to playing our part in creating a fairer society for everyone."
“In our operations division, over half of our new hires arrive straight from education or having previously been unemployed. Our apprenticeships programme has offered more than 5,000 apprentice roles across more than 50 schemes, and today there are more than 1,600 people taking part in the programme – making it one of the largest apprenticeship schemes in the UK.
“We urge all businesses to consider how they too can play a role in supporting social mobility, and help build a fairer society for everyone.”
Amazon supports social mobility through its apprenticeships programme. 85% of apprentices who finished their course continued to progress in their careers with Amazon, while 79% are still with the business today.
As part of the Care Leaver Covenant, Amazon recently launched The JOBS Project, a pioneering 10-week learning programme in partnership with Barnardo’s, providing young care leavers with training and mentoring to help them with their first steps into the workplace.
The Amazon Career Choice programme pre-pays 95% of adult learning tuition up to £8,000 to help our colleagues gain new skills and develop their careers. And in 2022 we launched a new employee network, the UK Social Mobility affinity group, to help build awareness of social mobility and promote resource sharing across the business.
Read more about how Amazon is supporting the retail industry and logistics sector to improve social mobility.
