Amazon’s Bot automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for ‘productivity’ 1

Amazon employs an automated system to tracks warehouse workers’ productivity, and automatically fire them for failing to meet expectations.

eCommerce giant Amazon’s reach across the consumer and digital landscape has been well documented. According to media reports, about $1 out of every $2 spent online in the US goes to Amazon. Not surprisingly, the tech-giant continues to adopt innovative technologies to manage its operations and workforce.

Some of these radical ideas raise eyebrows, while others are quickly adopted by peers in the industry. A while ago there was news that “Amazon scraped secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women” That move came after Amazon’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a bias that had crept into their new recruiting engine that did not like women.

Trends in RPA and intelligent automation continue to evolve, and executives across industry verticals look for innovative scenarios to automate. In the retail and eCommerce space, Amazon and Walmart are already deploying bots internally and also to gather data against each other (ref: How Amazon’s Bot Army Is Trouncing Walmart in E-Commerce Wars)

Amazon is also known for its obsessive focus on operational productivity across the supply chain – at its warehouses, distribution centers and delivery operators. Managers at the retail giant use artificial intelligence enabled systems to track almost all aspects of its operations.

In a recent article in The Verge, Colin Lecher reviewed documents that show how the company’s automated system tracks and terminates workers.
Documents obtained by The Verge (link) show those productivity firings are far more common than outsiders realize. According to the article,

The documents show a deeply automated tracking and termination process. “Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity,” according to the letter, “and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors.” (Amazon says supervisors are able to override the process.)

Critics see the system as a machine that only sees numbers, not people. “One of the things that we hear consistently from workers is that they are treated like robots in effect because they’re monitored and supervised by these automated systems,” Mitchell says. “They’re monitored and supervised by robots.”

The Verge obtained the letter and related documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. “Amazon consistently terminates fulfillment center associates for failing to repeatedly meet the standardized productivity rates,” the company’s attorney wrote in the letter. Amazon terminated the employee, the attorney wrote, “for the same reason it has terminated hundreds of other employees without regard to any alleged protected concerted activity.” The former employee’s charge was ultimately withdrawn.

According to The Verge article, Amazon’s system was designed to track “time off task,” which the company abbreviates as TOT. “If workers break from scanning packages for too long, the system automatically generates warnings and, eventually, the employee can be fired.”

Amazon’s use of Bots that automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for drop in ‘productivity’ may be raising eyebrows, but the fundamental principles – tracking, reviewing and taking corrective action on worker productivity – are already in place in many industries.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and call center operators regularly use tools to track, measure, and review agent productivity. (ref:  30 Strategies for Improving Agent Productivity).

Managers at customer contact centers use data, reports and dashboards from agent-monitoring tools to coach and discipline employees. These tools can generate alerts when variances in productivity are noticeable. However, they haven’t adopted Amazon’s practice of using Bots to automatically fire employees. At least not yet!