After years of tracking packages, Amazon planning to use the same playbook for employees, as company is betting on …
Amazon is reportedly taking the highly precise tracking systems it perfected for package logistics and applying them directly to its human workforce. Citing leaked internal documents, Business Insider reports that the e-commerce giant is quietly piloting a new program called Right Station Link that uses wearable devices to track warehouse employees in roles that were previously difficult to monitor.The report says that after optimising the movements of its frontline workers at stationary packing desks, Amazon is shifting its focus to “indirect” support roles, such as equipment maintenance, safety coordinators, and floor managers. Since these employees constantly move around the warehouse rather than staying at a single desk, their daily productivity has historically been tracked manually.Like other segments of its business, Amazon is betting on automating this data collection as it aims to eliminate human error, optimise worker placement and unlock millions of dollars in operational savings.
Digitising a $2.8 billion workforce blind spot
Citing an internal financial analysis from March, the report notes that these indirect support roles represent a massive financial footprint for Amazon, accounting for roughly 85 million labor hours and $2.8 billion in manual labor spending. Before this initiative, these mobile roles lacked the “digital signals” required to automatically confirm an employee’s exact location or task.“Right Station Link brings automated labor hour measurement to $2.8B of manually tracked labor spend in one deployment, enabling labor automation for all sortation roles,” one of the internal documents stated, as per the report.The technology is specifically designed to slash “non-productive labor hours” and “idle time,” ensuring moving employees strictly stick to their automated staffing assignments.
How Amazon plans to track moving employees
The documents also suggest why Amazon felt the tracking upgrade was necessary. Corporate analysts became concerned that local warehouse managers were overstaffing indirect roles beyond what corporate models recommended, using manual time-sheet edits to mask the discrepancies.To log this movement in real time, Amazon is turning to wearable hardware. Internal blueprints cited by Business Insider reveal that the company initially planned to deploy the Zebra WS501 wearable scanner that workers typically wear on the back of their hand. Amazon has completely eliminated manual time editing, forcing all labor hours to be coded directly through its strict internal software.An Amazon spokesperson pushed back against the idea that local managers were intentionally trying to “game the system.” The spokesperson told the publication that during pilot tests, managers were being cautious – manually keeping extra support staff on the floor to ensure unexpected spikes in package volume wouldn’t cause shipping delays.
