Amazon Makes Push to Reduce Worker Injuries
May 17 2021 - 06:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Sebastian Herrera
Amazon.com Inc. is establishing a program focused on improving
the health and wellness of its hourly warehouse staffers, after
years of criticism over worker safety at its depots and a pledge by
Chief Executive Jeff Bezos to offer a better vision for
employees.
The company said Monday that its new program, called
WorkingWell, aims to better educate some of its employees on how to
avoid workplace injuries and improve mental health on the job. The
online retailer began testing parts of the program two years ago
and plans to expand it to 1,000 facilities by the end of the year,
said Heather MacDougall, vice president of world-wide workplace
health and safety at Amazon. The company said it aims to cut
recordable incidents in half by 2025. The program has been in 350
sites in North America and Europe.
Amazon recorded 5.6 injuries per 100 workers in 2019, the last
full year of data, compared with the 4.8 rate nationally for the
warehousing and storage sector, according to company and federal
workplace data. Amazon says it monitors workplace injuries more
closely than other companies, which might cause its reported injury
rate to be higher.
Mr. Bezos said last month that the retailer needed to do a
better job for employees after a recent, unsuccessful push by some
Alabama warehouse workers to unionize. The vote is under appeal. In
a letter to shareholders, Mr. Bezos called reports of unsafe
working conditions at Amazon warehouses inaccurate.
Ms. MacDougall said Amazon, which employs about 950,000 people
in the U.S., was acting because of the frequency of workplace
injuries in the warehousing industry and because the coronavirus
pandemic has heightened the awareness of healthcare needs. Amazon
is particularly concerned about musculoskeletal disorders, she said
in an interview. The disorders, known as MSDs, account for 40% of
work-related injuries across the retailer's facilities, it
said.
"We've recognized that there is work to be done when it comes to
reducing MSDs," Ms. MacDougall said.
Under the WorkingWell program, warehouse employees gather on a
rotating basis near their work stations to watch videos about
injury prevention, including how to lift items properly. Depending
on their roles, employees also are given hourly prompts at their
stations that guide them through various stretching and breathing
exercises. Amazon, which uses tools to track worker productivity,
said the prompted exercise breaks can last from 30 seconds to a
minute each.
The company also is installing kiosks where employees can watch
videos that show guided meditations and calming scenes and sounds.
New wellness zones provide dedicated spaces for workers to stretch
or meditate, and the company plans to introduce a mobile app that
would let employees view similar educational tools at home. The
company also is developing staffing schedules that rotate employees
among jobs that use different muscle groups to reduce
repetitive-stress injuries.
Amazon's program doesn't include a significant reduction in the
rate at which employees are expected to work. That pace has been a
source of worker complaints. Some employees, for example, are
expected to take about 300 items off shelves each hour. Ms.
MacDougall said the company assesses employees based on what it
believes are achievable benchmarks.
"When we set rates, they are based on taking into account a
variety of factors that will make sure our employees can perform
the work safely," she said. "I don't think rates make our work
unsafe."
Jack Dennerlein, a professor at Northeastern University whose
research has focused on musculoskeletal disorders, said introducing
educational tools in workplaces is often not enough to
substantially reduce injuries. Generally, he said, measures that
provide mechanical lifts or reconfigure how a workplace is
organized have a bigger impact.
"It should be fitting the job to the human, not fitting the
human to the job," Mr. Dennerlein said.
Mr. Bezos has said Amazon needs to innovate to reduce
injuries.
The company's employee-safety initiative comes after a year in
which its warehousing practices have been under scrutiny. Some
workers held walkouts at several Amazon facilities last year to
protest what they said were unsafe working conditions amid the
spread of Covid-19. The company has said it spent billions of
dollars to respond to the virus, including on employee testing. It
recently started offering employees on-site vaccinations at
warehouses.
Amazon said it is investing more than $300 million in safety
projects in 2021. Mr. Bezos said the company's emphasis on
preventing injuries contributed to a 32% drop in musculoskeletal
disorders at the retailer in 2020, compared with the previous
year.
Write to Sebastian Herrera at Sebastian.Herrera@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 17, 2021 06:14 ET (10:14 GMT)
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