What Amazon’s plan to improve worker safety reveals about the company’s true nature – GeekWire

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An Amazon signal above the entrance to a sortation center. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)

Addressing the problem of warehouse employee protection in response to a shareholder problem this 7 days, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy described the company’s basic safety initiatives — most of them related to engineering and invention.

  • Wearable technologies with haptic indicators to let personnel know when their movements are putting their safety at hazard.
  • A system with algorithms that forecast when persons performing repetitive jobs are at danger of personal injury, so they can be moved to distinctive routines.
  • New varieties of transportation, including motor vehicles and technologies to minimize accident rates.
Andrea Leigh, a former Amazon basic manager, is founder and CEO of Allume Team.

Amazon’s emphasis on technological know-how is “true to their DNA,” says previous Amazon basic manager and retail category leader Andrea Leigh, who is now founder and CEO of Allume Group, an e-commerce discovering corporation.

“They centered a minor bit considerably less on empathy and more on the science and the know-how of place of work protection,” Leigh states.

Wanting at it from Amazon’s perspective, the technique can make perception, she factors out: “If you have 50 percent-a-million or additional warehouse employees, you are in all probability thinking about it algorithmically.”

But labor unions and employees are focused additional on the personal human impact.

“And I believe those people two factors of look at just will not at any time marry,” Leigh suggests.

That’s one particular of the takeaways from our discussion with Leigh on this week’s GeekWire Podcast, recapping and analyzing Amazon’s yearly conference this 7 days. Quite a few shareholder proposals at the meeting resolved staff problems, like warehouse employee basic safety and unionization.

We also communicate about Amazon’s effort to return to profitability in its consumer small business, the greater goal driving its actual physical retail merchants, and the force for more range and inclusion in its workforce, amongst other subjects.

Hear above, or subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or where ever you listen.

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