The company is also offering to pay staff to get high school diplomas, GEDs, and ESL proficiency certificates.
Amazon has announced it is expanding the education and skills training benefits it offers to all its 750,000 hourly U.S. employees.
The company will now pay college tuition for those who wish to further their education. This “total investment of $1.2 billion” will include paying for front-line employees to get high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language proficiency certificates.
These benefits are offered to employees who’ve worked for the team for at least 90 days.
“Amazon is now the largest job creator in the U.S., and we know that investing in free skills training for our teams can have a huge impact for hundreds of thousands of families across the country,” CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon, Dave Clark, said about the brand's Career Choice Program.
"We launched Career Choice almost 10 years ago to help remove the biggest barriers to continuing education—time and money—and we are now expanding it even further to pay full tuition and add several new fields of study."
Clark adds that they will build over 110 on-site classrooms for staff in Amazon fulfillment centers in 37 states.
The Amazon website says that there is no limit to how long employees can benefit from these funds. They are available to them for however long they need.
The funding is pre-paid, so employees don’t have to worry about paying anything out-of-pocket or being reimbursed for schooling.
In addition, Amazon is offering three new tuition-free upskilling programs so those entry-level employees who choose can work towards transitioning into higher-paying jobs within the company.
