The data analysis by the HelpCenter app team shows that among the three e-commerce rivals – Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay – the latter is the most efficiently productive. With $811,024 revenue per employee, eBay’s workforce efficiency exceeds its competitors nearly 3 times, leaving Amazon with $297,381 and Alibaba with $285,540 revenue per employee behind.

The results were calculated based on official data from the selected e-commerce companies. Amazon earned a staggering $386 billion last year with an army of 1.298,000 employees, followed by Alibaba’s $71.98 billion generated by 252,084 workers, and 

eBay’s $10.30 billion (12,700 employees).

Better employee engagement leads to higher work efficiency

Managing existing human resources, onboarding high numbers of new employees, and keeping them all engaged have not been easy for e-commerce giants as well, and that might have affected each company’s revenue per employee as a result.

Although Amazon managed to bring the company’s revenue to its all-time highs, it’s also the most popular e-commerce platform that likely had to face the biggest challenges once the demand for online shopping increased. Therefore, the U.S. retail giant had to expand its team significantly and now employs over 1 million people for the first time ever.

Similarly, Alibaba Group welcomed 150 126 people to join their team in 2020, resulting in a nearly 60% increase from 2019. On the contrary, eBay lost 600 people in 2020 (4.51% decline compared to 2019), yet the company still managed to keep its revenue per employee nearly 3 times higher than its competitors.

The HelpCenter app’s co-founder Ernestas Petkevicius commented on the challenges of the coronavirus outbreak:

“It is clear that COVID has put some of the workers in these companies at greater risk than others. Amazon and Alibaba have many more frontline workers and also had to hire many more new employees to keep up with demand, while Ebay was exempt from this huge issue and was more efficient as a result. Nevertheless, it is impressive how all of them dealt with the coronavirus issues and grew top line revenue at immense pace.”

Onboarding new people and managing thousands or, in Amazon’s case, over million of people brings various organizational challenges, hence, can impact employee engagement which is vital not only for controlling costs but can also lead to up to 18% higher growth in revenue per employee.

Although all three companies have officially presented plenty of steps to support and protect their workers, some were criticized for taking weeks to implement the measures, which left employees irritated.

To get the best out of the e-commerce golden age, businesses will have to keep an eye on ongoing trends and adjust, quickly – not only by meeting customer demands but sincerely caring about those who also are a crucial part of further growth, their employees.