Dive Brief:

• Amazon has instituted an internal system called “Amazon Connections” to be in touch with employees about job satisfaction, leadership and training opportunities, and other aspects of their work, Bloomberg reports.

• The program comes after a high-profile account in the New York Times earlier this year described a white-collar culture at the company that induced back-stabbing, cut-throat competition, and low morale.

• The company has also come under fire for its treatment of warehouse workers. 

Dive Insight:

Amazon founder-CEO Jeff Bezos seemed genuinely taken aback by the description of Amazon as a heartless place to work in the August New York Times story. At the time he deplored the paper’s portrait of the company as “shockingly callous management practices” that he said wouldn't help a business thrive or even survive.

“I don’t recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don’t, either,” he wrote in his email to employees.

The troubling details in the New York Times rang a bell with other accounts, though. Brad Stone, author of the 2013 book "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon," (which famously earned a one-star review on Amazon itself from Bezos' wife), unearthed many of the same issues in the company.

Amazon is used to being a leader when it comes to retail innovations, but when it comes to its work environment, it appears to be playing catch-up.

While not always understood (and often lampooned), the corporate cultures at places like Google and Zappos, for example, have long included several innovative methods for ensuring employee contentment and feedback.