Why Jeff Bezos Really Wants To Test All Amazon Employees For COVID-19

Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, just days after touring several Amazon properties recently (one of which tested positive for COVID-19), wants to test all Amazon employees according to the Wall Street Journal. Not a bad business considering millions of people are placing upon the system. The question is, why not sooner?

With Amazon workers striking around the world and pressure from Senators and external organisations to improve conditions (even before the crisis), Amazon could be said to listening to critics. Bezos’s annual stakeholder letter pays particular attention to these important issues and is generally a pithy read in light of recent events and compared to previous years.

Currently, Amazon is handling the COVID-19 crisis but as we break the two million cases number and cases in the US continue to increase two things are certain; more customers will get sick and, more employees will get sick. Apart from a communications nightmare if workers weren’t tested, it is a better strategy (until you can all robot workers) to have workers that get protected from a deadly disease.

“Regular testing on a global scale, across all industries, would both help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running. For this to work, we as a society would need vastly more testing capacity than is currently available,” Bezos said in the letter, which offers a rare window into the thinking of the world’s richest man and his plans for the company he founded. Bezos in recent years has rarely done media interviews or commented publicly on events.

Bezos also discussed other steps he has and would be willing to take to stop the spread of COVID-19. From shutting down services like Amazon Books temporarily to changing Whole Foods processes. During the COVID-19 crisis, Amazon has been battling multiple issues from a logistics and a PR perspective with cries from staff for better conditions and protective procedures.

A fact that should make the new 100,000 employees of Amazon that the company hired in less than a month. Sorry, make that 175,000 as Amazon recently announced the company was recruiting an extra 75,000 employees to cope with demand.

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Amazon customers are spending almost $11,000 per second (Guardian) on products and services currently and the share price is at an all-time high ($2,398.89 per share), while pandemics may be good for business, pandemics may not be good for long-term worker health and satisfaction as much as short term. Something Bezos and company will be looking at carefully when forging ahead with more automation. A future that is not here yet. Amazon needs humans and well humans at that. As Amazon’s position in the hearts and minds of consumers around the globe shift, you can be forgiven for remembering that only month ago Senators were beating a path to the desk of Bezos about working conditions and anti-trust issues. Amazon is reading from a new chapter with the Pandemic but still using the same playbook.

One thing is certain, where the company goes after the crisis ends will be more interesting than what the company does now.