Peterborough operations manager shares secrets of career building at Amazon during Learning at Work Week 2025

Each year, the Learning at Work Week programme is run by charity Campaign for Learning. The charity works with organisations across the UK to arrange events, stimulate curiosity in the workplace and support organisational goals by engaging employees in continued learning.

This year’s theme, 'Get Connected', highlights the social aspect of lifelong learning at work, with a focus on how collaboration between colleagues can support their learning and professional development through understanding and empathy.

Laura Malniece, who works at the Amazon fulfilment centre in Peterborough, has used Amazon’s training and development pathways to further her professional goals.

One of the pathways Laurahas taken advantage of to progress her career is Amazon Career Choice. The programme, which has been running at Amazon since 2012, supports participants by covering up to 95% of tuition and fees for courses in high-demand fields, with an available amount of up to £8,000 over four years, regardless of whether the participant proceeds to pursue a career at Amazon.

There are many pathways for progression within Amazon Career Choice, including associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees and certificates. Software development, English language classes, accountancy and HGV driving are just some of the courses on offer and are designed to help employees build careers at Amazon or elsewhere. This means that eligible employees are given the opportunity to gain the skills and qualifications needed to follow their career aspirations, whatever they might be.

Laura, who used Career Choice to help land her role as a transport operations manager, has shared her experience to inspire others to elevate her own career using the Amazon Career Choice programme.

A seven-minute walk takes Laura from her home to the door of the fulfilment centre – a journey she’s made hundreds of times over the course of her 11-year career at the company.

Alongside her role as a TOM manager, Laura is also Amazon in Peterborough’s sustainability ambassador and a member of the BEAM team, which trains emerging leaders in Amazon’s buildings across Europe.

“I didn’t think I would be able to make anything of myself when I was younger,” shared Laura. “I moved to the UK from a very small village in Lativa with no career plans and very little vision of what I wanted to do.

“I didn’t know what Amazon was when a friend recommended the company as an employer. With little else to do, I thought ‘why not?’, so joined the team at the Peterborough fulfilment centre on a temporary contract.”

“It was clear to me when I joined Amazon that I could do whatever I wanted to do, if I looked for the opportunities,” Laura continued. “I always thought I’d end up doing something repetitive and boring as a job, but Amazon opened my eyes to the world of data and training and sparked something in me that I’ve been using to progress ever since.

“My main takeaway from my first few months in the job was that anybody can be somebody at Amazon. That perspective hasn’t changed in 11 years.”

Laura became a permanent team lead just one year into her career at Amazon. Since then, she has used Amazon’s training programmes to carve out the career she wants for herself. She has completed Career Choice programmes in bookkeeping, management accountancy and office management – all of which she says brought her closer to understanding the direction she wanted her career to take.

“I love data,” said Laura. “Everything at Amazon involves monitoring data – everything is tracked. The first Career Choice course I did was bookkeeping, and whilst I wasn’t the strongest at maths on the course, it gave me a good perspective of numbers and why tracking impact is so important. The management accountancy course boosted that further.

“It was the office management course I did, however, that completely changed my perspective on what I could achieve at Amazon. We learned about empathy and emotional intelligence when managing people, and it lit a spark in me to become the best manager I could be some day – and hopefully the best manager people will ever have.

“I’m now in a management position and want everybody to see the vision I have of what you can achieve at Amazon – the vision I got on my very first day. I’ve evolved a lot as a person during my time at the company, and the Career Choice courses I completed were fundamental to that, in both a personal and professional sense.”

In 2019, Laura won the opportunity to visit Amazon’s global headquarters in Seattle after taking part in the company’s I Found the Right Place competition. I Found the Right Place invited employees working across the UK to tell Amazon why the company is the right place for them to work and what they love most about their working life.

Laura says that winning the competition and having the opportunity to represent her Peterborough team in the US is one of her proudest achievements from her time at Amazon. Other significant moments for Laura include becoming a member of the BEAM team, which allows her to travel all over Europe delivering training, and watching people she’s trained progress in their own careers.

Laura said: “The people I work with are my proudest career achievement. Many people I’ve managed are now way above me in ranking, including one colleague who’s an operations manager in an Amazon building in London. I know how important encouragement is to people as they progress, so I want to give that to as many people as possible.

“I always tell people to look around for the opportunities they want to take hold of and seek out people who are doing the roles or training it would take to get them there and speak to them. I tried three Career Choice courses before the pieces slotted into place for me to see where my career was going, so I always tell people to try things out and see how they go.

“I wouldn’t have progressed in my career so quickly at Amazon if I hadn’t had that attitude, and it’s served me well for over a decade.”

There are also many opportunities available at Amazon for employees to improve their existing skillset or discover new ones internally, by getting involved in apprenticeships, transferring departments or getting promoted to management positions.

Amazon employees receive competitive pay and comprehensive benefits. The minimum starting pay for frontline operations employees is between £13.50 and £14.50 p/h, depending on location. For those with 36 months service, this is £13.75 and £14.75p/h, depending on location.

Amazon has invested £550m in increased pay for operations employees across the UK since 2022, representing a 35% increase in the hourly rate in just two years. Additionally, from day one, all employees are offered a comprehensive benefits package including private medical insurance, life assurance, income protection, subsidized meals and an employee discount. Together, these benefits are worth more than £700 annually, and employees can take advantage of Amazon’s company pension plan.

Amazon has been named as a ‘Top Employer UK 2025’ by the Top Employer Institute, for the second year in a row, one of the world’s most prestigious certifications in the field of human resources management. This award recognises Amazon’s commitment to the development and well-being of its employees. In addition to the UK accolade, Amazon has also been certified as one of the Top Employers in Europe for a third consecutive year.

In 2025, Amazon ranked in second place on LinkedIn’s Top Companies list — an annual list that identifies the most sought-after large companies to work for and grow your career in the UK. Using data from LinkedIn’s 900 million members, LinkedIn’s Top Companies list is designed to help professionals identify the best companies to grow their careers.

To find out more about a career with Amazon, visit Amazon Jobs.