Bezos shareholder letter addresses Amazon workplace injuries

All through the course of the 22-minute learn, the richest individual on this planet provided fascinating perception into the trillion-dollar firm he based in a Seattle storage; the rich share-owners who purchased seven-eighths of the corporate’s inventory; the 1.3 million staff who toil to construct the corporate’s fortune; and the enigmatic psyche of the person himself.

Particularly, Bezos dedicates a core a part of the letter house to Amazon’s mission to grow to be “Earth’s Greatest Employer and Earth’s Most secure Place to Work,” after the corporate was caught in a storm of adverse commentary about its labor practices in latest weeks.

“If you happen to learn among the information reviews, you may assume we’ve no care for workers,” Bezos writes. “In these reviews, our staff are typically accused of being determined souls and handled as robots. That’s not correct.”

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In an effort to enhance working situations for workers, he says, Amazon is engineering a classy, synthetic intelligence-powered system for staffing that goals to cut back workplace injuries. In response to the letter, “about 40% of work-related injuries at Amazon are associated to musculoskeletal problems (MSDs), issues like sprains or strains that may be attributable to repetitive motions,” that are widespread in warehouse work and transport and supply. The system’s new algorithms would rotate staff amongst jobs that use completely different muscle-tendon teams, to lower repetitive movement and assist defend staff from MSD dangers.

In 2021, Bezos provides, Amazon will make investments $66 million into creating know-how to stop collisions of forklifts and different forms of industrial autos.

With that, Bezos, who will stay government chairman of the corporate after stepping down from his CEO position later this 12 months, seems to be digging for options by returning to his roots: “I’m an inventor. It’s what I get pleasure from probably the most and what I do finest,” he writes in his letter.

In 2020, Amazon’s annual income totaled $386 billion, and its internet revenue skyrocketed 84% year-over-year amid a procuring increase attributable to the coronavirus pandemic.

You possibly can learn the complete letter here.