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Amazon Women’s Leadership Program (WLP)

Company name : Amazon EU S.à r.l.

Activity sector : Other

Company category : Large company

 

Encourage

Description of the action

WLP is a three-day virtual or two-day in-person program designed to support women and non-binary leaders in by empowering them with necessaryskills to navigate workplace challenges, by making them aware of barriers that can hinder career development and equipping them withskills competences to meet address the challenges through self-discovery.

Context

WLP was created to encourages meaningful discussions within Amazon to lead us towards more equalgender representation through hiring, retention, development, performance management and other mechanisms.  Our vision for this program is to create an environment at Amazon where women are helping each other, and where women are alert to point out inequities.   Woman will be able to recognize and feel comfortable calling out situations where women are not represented in organizational leadership.  For example, calling out where biased language is being used in promotion slates or talent reviews.  The research andskills that practiced in this program will help woman play an active role in reducinggender inequities throughout the company.  The program, creates a space to discuss ways in which we can educate our male colleagues about some of these challenges and also ways in which they can be our advocates.  Words of month have been the best promoter of the program which expanded into X Orgs and 35 countries.  We do not invite men to this program so that we can have an open conversation about the challenges from our perspectives as individuals who identify as women.   But this does not mean that the conversation ends here, we have a Men as Allies (MAA) training module that take the conversation forward as well as Woman Leadership Conversation (WLC), which is a companion to the larger WLP, offering an opportunity for women and non-binary leaders to attend a 1-hour panel discussion with senior women leaders discussinggender related issues in the business.WLP is a three-day virtual or two-day in-person program designed to support women and non-binary leaders in by empowering them with necessaryskills to navigate workplace challenges, by making them aware of barriers that can hinder career development and equipping them withskills competences to meet address the challenges through self-discovery.

Objectives

The goal of the program is to increase the number of female women’s representation at all levels, removegender barriers and create a more inclusive work environment.  The program helps women leaders become aware of barriers that can hinder career development and equips them withskills to meet the challenges through self-discovery.
The program has two parts:
1. Identify challenges and understand how this impacts women and non-binary leaders:gender Challenges Woman Face, Communication Challenges Woman Face, Tacticalgender Challenges Woman Face, Importance of Allyship, Importance of Mentorship, Sponsorship and Networking.
2. Taking Ownership: Owing my Career, Successful Career Conversations, Stakeholder Management, Building my Leadership Brand and Importance of Self Advocacy.
Goal: Attendance of 30% of the female women mid-level leaders with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) score of 95%.

Approach

The program targets Woman and non-binary employees, at entry level leadership and with tenure 6 month+ in the Organization.  The design uses experiential learning methodologies such as instructional videos with debriefings, group learning, role-plays, reflection, learning from leaders, and learning through peer feedback.

Impact

During 2022 we run an analyses of Women’s Leadership Program (WLP) with respect to promotion and attrition, comparing leaders who completed WLP and those who did not.  WLP is associated with increased likelihood of promotion by 63.1% for those who completed WLP compared to those who did not.  Moreover, WLP is associated with decreased likelihood of attrition by 51.7% for those who completed the program versus who did not.  Lastly, self-assessments by graduates indicate that WLP is effective in encouraging positive behavioral changes and skill acquisitions for women leaders.  We further conducted promotion and attrition analyses comparing WLP graduates to a random group of women leaders who have never registered for WLP.  The results indicate even stronger correlation between WLP completion and increased likelihood of promotion, as well as decreased likelihood of attrition.  The analysis also outlines participants’ self-assessment on skill acquisitions and behavioral changes around WLP’s nine learning objectives such as Navigating Workplace Challenges and Advocating for Self.  For example, only 31.8% of women rated their behaviors andskills in Navigating Workplace Challenges as positive before completing WLP. After completing WLP, 92.6% of the women in the same group rated their behaviors andskills as positive.  In 2023 DEI enrolled 344 WLP attendees with a 72% attendance rate, 42 guest speakers, 7 facilitators and 30+ facilitators are trained for 2024. Since its inception in 2015, 3,000+ women leaders have completed WLP across 35 countries.

« To do »

#WLP, #Amazon, #WomenLeaders, #DEI, #Awareness

« Not to do »

Set accountability partners session after each day, set quarterly WLP cohort connect, it is ok to be vulnerable

Links

men bashing, never assume, keep anecdotes shared in the workshop confidential,
Links: videos ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxrPeFKtUwQ ;

Keywords : Evaluation, mobility and career management

Published on 19 December 2023

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