Amazon is a company that obsesses over the customer experience, but we don’t let that focus get in the way of creating a quality work environment for hundreds of thousands of hourly employees across the globe. We ensure associate safety through open dialogue and an industry-leading two-way feedback system, operational meetings, new hire orientation, and hours of on-the-spot training.
Leaders in our facilities apply high standards of safety performance each day and proactively work with associates to reduce physical risk through coaching, ergonomic training, and through the design of processes, equipment and work areas. The industry-leading technology we use every day is designed to protect and promote our employees, and we are constantly testing and refining processes to increase the quality of the working conditions in our facilities.
Amazon’s dedication to innovating on behalf of customers is the same approach we have for associates in our buildings, which can be broken down into three categories: improvement, investment, and innovation. It fuels the Amazon Safety flywheel – each action feeds into the next, creating a continuous cycle driving a safe working environment … always with people as our central focus. For example, we employ across the network our Safety Leadership Index designed to collect direct feedback from associates – full-time, part time, seasonal and temporary – to better understand areas for improvement. Using thousands of pieces of data collected from employees on a near daily basis, we have improved our safety practices and enhanced the working environments of our facilities in matters both large and small.
Here are some numbers to back up our safety record:
- 24/7 – Hours in a day, days in a week in which an associate is able to provide direct feedback to their manager, their general manager, and even the CEO on what can be done to improve the safety of our facilities. They can do this via direct feedback, our Voice of Associate boards, the Safety Leadership Index questions, meetings, and our general open-door policy.
- Over 600 – The number of changes we’ve made as a result of associate feedback via our industry-leading Safety Leadership Index tool in which we ask associates what we can do to improve their well-being at work.
- 1400 – The number of EHS professionals working to make sure our teams are working together to foster the safest environment possible.
- Thousands of safety inspections occur each day across our network to ensure safe handling and operation inside fulfillment centers. During these daily inspections, senior leaders from all the facility's teams spend time on the production floor to evaluate the work environment, talk to associates about areas for improvement, and move learnings into immediate actions.
- 1,000,000 – The number of hours employees went through safety training in just 2018. Safety training is constant in our buildings, starting from day one with new hire orientation. We provide all associates six hours of safety training on their first day and continuous on-the-job training throughout their tenure.
- $55,000,000 – We spent more than this on capital investments directly related to safety improvements in our fulfillment centers in 2018. Key capital investments we've made in the last year include $14 million to improve the safety of our facility parking lots to ensure employees can enter and exit safely and efficiently, $9 million to retrofit pallet racking so employees have the newest equipment in dynamic areas of the fulfillment center, $16 million on powered industrial truck improvements, and $1.6 on pedestrian safety controls in some of our specialized distribution centers.
We’re excited about all of the work we’re doing to promote safety in the fulfillment centers, as well as the innovative technology we’re developing to keep associates safe. For example, we’ve begun rolling out the Robotic Tech Vest at Amazon Robotics facilities, which allows robotic units to detect associates from a distance and smartly update its travel plan to steer clear of associates and keep them safe. This innovative thinking, on top of our culture of direct engagement with employees, and our shared mission to deliver for our associates in a quality work environment keeps us making progress.
We encourage anyone to come see our dedication to safety for themselves by taking a tour at one of our fulfillment centers where guests will immediately see that associates are encouraged to call out safety concerns through our Safety Saves program, employees wear highly visible reflective vests in dedicated areas, and leaders constantly inspecting the floor to evaluate safety measures and working conditions. Children ages 6 and up are invited to tour – it’s that safe.
