Amazon human-resources operation that already extended his medical leave once, Banks is seen as an employee quitting his job. The company has initiated automatic termination proceedings for missing shifts twice in recent weeks.
“I think it’s too much right now,” Banks says. “But for all the resources they have, it’s almost like a mom-and-pop operation.”
After suffering from delayed labor and massive absenteeism during the initial weeks of the epidemic, Amazon has taken another hit: handling thousands of requests requiring sick employees and those at home to care for human beings Resources Department Sick. Children or elderly relatives.
It is unclear how many workers are hanging in the balance, but Bloomberg spoke with six workers who work in facilities from New Jersey to Indian. They say they have been paid back for sick leave or time spent in quarantine, scheduled for a shift while sick, or were denied leave despite providing documentation of conditions Amazon says Is that they should be made eligible to live in a house without pay.
Many companies will struggle with this unprecedented emergency, made harder by the federal government’s ineffective response to an epidemic that has sickened more than 1.8 million people and killed more than 100,000 people. Meanwhile, state governments are reeling from a flood of unemployment claims.
But the design of Amazon’s HR department reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s culture. It’s much more automated, helping Amazon grow faster and control costs, but employees end up dead these days with chatbots, smartphone apps, and phone trees.
Three people with experience in the company’s human resources group say the unit has been weighed, prioritizing competition. Employees say that HR customers are expected to provide instant customer service similar to Amazon customers, which sometimes leads to austerity levels.
HR is “always struggling to be automated and keeping pace with the scale of the company,” says one of the people, who requested all anonymity as they signed confidentiality agreements. “Horror stories happen because [HR] people are overwhelmed. And they don’t have the resources and mental capacity to deal with [workers] because they’re drawn in so many different directions. Its negative, real-life human impacts. Has an impact on. “
Amazon says banks have threatened to terminate the employee, have not received this notice, and that they are sent after banks failed to submit proof of their status after applying for an extension of leave I went.
“These are unprecedented times, and we are increasingly working to support our employees, partners, and provide critical services to needy communities,” Amazon spokesman Lisa Lewandowski said in an email. “We have created 175,000 jobs across the US, increasing salaries, periodically adjusted options, just to name a few, to support the hundreds of thousands of employees who work in our sites. Like all companies, we are rapidly adjusting to support our teams. ”
He added that Amazon has added 2,500 full-time and temporary employees to the human-resources teams that have supported its logistics group since the beginning of the year.
The epidemic has created one of the biggest challenges in Amazon’s quarter-century history. According to media reports and internal information, workers have benefited from a surge in online orders from out-of-home shoppers, Kovid-19 killed more than 1,100 employees and killed nine. Amazon, which announces how many employees have caught the virus, has hired without ceasing its operations on a large scale, designed to make the company’s logistic proof compatible with public health guidelines Thanks to hiring and new security measures.
However, behind the scenes, the hiring binge and the health crisis have put a lot of pressure on a human-resource operation that was already struggling to keep up with Amazon’s growth. The company has added an average of 130,000 workers a year over the last half-decade. Then, during a six-week period that began in March, Amazon made up its mind to recruit 175,000 people to help keep it in line with the order to recruit 175,000 people.
Amazon has worked for years to reduce the human effort behind administrative tasks. Part of a company-wide mandate for deploying automation and advanced software, a prerequisite that Amazon could invent future systems and keep a lid on costs at the same time. The automated process is a requirement for the human resources department that conducts many millions of employee inquiries a year. But those systems can be of little help to an overwhelmed employee who needs time to sift through Amazon policies and government laws on behalf of an employee.
For some time, Amazon outsourced some work – to Readgreg, a provider of outsourced leisure management services, to employees seeking family or medical leave. But issues to be covered, including missed dates and staff, leave to repay their return dates, were included. (Readgroup did not immediately comment.)
Amazon began working behind the house late last year, completing a transfer on March 2, two weeks before the company’s first Covid-19 case was confirmed among American workers. Many employees stopped showing shifts short or short, with Amazon backed up by offering unlimited unpaid time without the risk of termination.
Andre Goodin, who works at Amazon’s warehouse outside Baltimore, fell ill in April and was ordered into quarantine while he awaited the Kovid-19 test which eventually turned out to be negative. Back at work, he had a second scare. A colleague he tests positive a few days after the team meal, during which a small group eats pizza together. Goodin, who was told by HR on the site to wait for Amazon to contact him, decided to quarantine if he determined he was at risk of exposure.
Amazon says it has no record of Goodin coming in contact with someone who tested positive for Kovid-19. The company says it uses video footage to determine such exposure and defines the contact for the purposes of its contact-tracing program, as more than 15 minutes within six feet of a person’s exposure.
By then, Amazon’s unpaid time offer was over. The company said that people suffering from Kovid-19, those in quarantine and those who require time to care for or shelter loved ones with at-risk family members, would be eligible for the leave. But the delay of the requests overwhelmed Amazon’s ability to respond.
Goodin, still trying to get paid he believes he is eligible for his first quarantine, is never optimistic about paying for his second. He has killed the dead while trying to use Amazon’s self-service options and says he waited hours to talk to representatives of Amazon’s Employee Resource Center. “It went from being able to call and talk to one person until now, they automatically redirect you to the website and hang up on you,” he says.
Goodin and other hourly warehouse workers typically use a smartphone app for most workplace issues. They can also ask for help from on-site HR teams. They should open a case with centralized HR teams in the U.S., Costa Rica, and India, compared to giving more time off for multiple tasks or fixing a missed time card punch.
Employees at San Jose, an employee call center in Costa Rica, sometimes told frustrated employees that delayed responses from HR would mean termination or miss paychecks, according to someone familiar with the operation. The person said that Amazon was already struggling to manage call volume, as it withdrew the management of holiday services from Readgreg. Then the virus struck, and the phone started ringing continuously. “Apparently, no one saw that it was going to happen,” the person says. “Amazon was, and still is not prepared for the number of cases that they have.”
For some employees, they have to rethink their employer’s choice due to hanging in the balance.
A worker at a warehouse on the East Coast, who toiled over the weekend to help Amazon deal with a surge in orders, sometimes putting in 20 hours of overtime a week, was burned. In April, he sought unpaid leave to catch his breath. She made sure to put in the request early, which took about three weeks for Amazon to respond. Never done human resources.
“I’ve been his biggest supporter,” he says of Amazon. “I went from feeling 100% on them, I’m on zero. It’s worth changing by us.”
Another employee, overcome by a case of Covid-19, who was caught early in the epidemic and his illness was confirmed by antibody testing, asked HR to compensate him for that sick time. The company misquoted the request, she says, and placed it on unpaid leave, an order of events Amazon says
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