In today’s fluctuating world, all companies strive to support their employees and ensure they have credible knowledge and practical skills to compete with others by offering them training programs. AT&T, the American leader in telecommunications, media, and internet services is not an exception, as the company provides Nanodegree training. Meanwhile, Amazon, a multinational e-commerce company, focuses on multiple training programs for its staff. More extensive geographic segmentation allows Amazon to have more efficient and diverse training programs than AT&T.
The significant difference between the two companies lies in the number of offered training programs and their professional approach to them. AT&T offers only a Nanodegree program, while Amazon has many apprenticeships focusing on various aspects such as technical, mechatronics and robotics, UX research, and design. This variety is justified by the fact that the company accelerates its international sales, having more broad geographic audience than AT&T, limited in the US borders. That is why the company quickly covers 95% of the tuition fees of the Career Choice program abroad (Amazon, 2022). Moreover, many pieces of training use a gamification approach when game design elements are utilized in non-game contexts (Armstrong & Landers, 2018). For example, Amazon Technical Academy implements engaging behavioral modeling-styled training where employees relate learned concepts to real-life examples. Therefore, each of Amazon’s many programs has extraordinary features, such as gamification, which makes them unique.
The Nanodegree program is tightly intertwined with the STEM employees, allowing AT&T to provide essential data science, artificial intelligence, programming, and development skills. Unlike Amazon’s primary focus on the company’s employees only, AT&T allows everyone to join its program (AT&T, 2022). Meanwhile, Amazon contributes to the skills of hired employees by involving them in a Machine Learning University, where they learn software programming quickly. Although Amazon has training programs that invite non-staff members, their number is negligible because the company is interested in promoting its workers and enhancing productivity rather than just offering training to everyone. This difference hints at the idea that Amazon wants its employees to succeed, while AT&T’s training is more inclusive.
Another differing feature of the training programs companies offer is their eagerness to accept people completing them. For example, AT&T admits that the skills obtained by their program meet only some of the entry-level jobs, accepting only 100 people as interns (AT&T, 2022). Considering that thousands of people graduate from the Nanodegree program, but only a few get hired full-time is very frustrating. In contrast, 95% of employees graduating from Amazon Technical Academy were promoted to software development engineers (Amazon, 2022). Additionally, evaluating training effectiveness through return on investments point that training returns such as task performance and competency outweigh its costs only in Amazon (Andrews & Laing, 2018). Hence, unlike Amazon, AT&T provides training but does not guarantee its success.
The similarity between the programs is their formative evaluation, assessing employees at different periods. Both companies realize that performance evaluation occasionally neglects essential episode sets emerging over time and provides an incomplete perspective (Sitzmann & Weinhardt, 2018). For example, AT&T conducts several online interviews and testing to ensure that the applicants keep up with the course’s pace. Thus, AT&T and Amazon monitor their participants to improve the programs annually.
To conclude, AT&T currently provides only one training, which includes many people seeking a job, but only some get employed upon graduation. In comparison, Amazon has many programs for its employees to ensure they gain new skills to get promoted within the company. Although Amazon demonstrates significant superiority over AT&T in employee training, both companies strive to improve their productivity and advancement of the working force.
References
Amazon. (2022). Our upskilling commitments. Web.
Andrews, P., & Laing, G. (2018). Evaluating the outcomes of a training program through an ROI evaluation: A case study. E-Journal of Social & Behavioral Research in Business, 9(3), 1–9. Web.
Armstrong, M. B., & Landers, R. N. (2018). Gamification of employee training and development. International Journal of Training and Development, 22(2), 162–169. Web.
AT&T. (2022). AT&T’s Nanodegree program affordable trainings for high-demand tech jobs. Web.
Sitzmann, T., & Weinhardt, J. M. (2018). Training engagement theory: A multilevel perspective on the effectiveness of work-related training. Journal of Management, 44(2), 732–756. Web.