Amazon & Fully Automated Pitfalls

​When the COVID-19 virus made its way to the US and started spreading at an alarming rate, its safe to say most employers were unprepared or unequipped to handle...

...the multitude of unforeseen complications this unprecedented pandemic would eventually cause.  ​​

​ We of course know of the obvious challenges companies faced - such as necessary layoffs and furloughs, setting up and coordinating employees to work remotely, and unfortunately for some companies completely shutting down all operations and closing their doors – just to name a few. What wasn’t as apparent during the initial onslaught of the virus outbreak, however, was how this pandemic would disrupt a number of internal processes and cause trickle down pitfalls for a vast number of employers. Even some of the largest companies in the world, with endless resources, weren’t immune to the unanticipated operational drawbacks that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic. 

One such example of this that has been made public is online retail giant Amazon’s highly automated leave of absence HR operating procedures. A recent article published by Bloomberg details how the enormous influx of leave of absence cases for Amazon workers as a result of the COVID outbreak has essentially overwhelmed their mostly automated LOA human resource information systems.  The article states that,  “After suffering delivery delays and mass absenteeism during the early weeks of the pandemic, Amazon has hit another snag: a human resources department ill prepared to handle the thousands of requests pouring in from sick employees and those who need to stay home to care for their children or elderly relatives.” Bloomberg interviewed a number of Amazon employees from different locations who shared their stories on how Amazon’s automated systems have initiated unwarranted termination proceedings, denied leave despite providing documentation of conditions, being scheduled for shifts while their still out sick, and delays in back pay being owed while being out on sick leave. 

​It's tough to knock Amazon for their shortcomings in this regard considering the unprecedented challenges COVID-19 has caused, especially for a company of their size. They are with almost certainty not the only company who has experienced such systematic hiccups within their HR operations. Nonetheless, the situation that Amazon’s HR department has found themselves in during this crisis does bring into question a much larger overarching debate – can, and more importantly, should HR administrative processes, such as LOA and COBRA, be completely automated? Or has issues the likes of which Amazon’s LOA process is currently experiencing during this period exposed the need for a certain balance between human interactivity and HR technology? 

The abundance of human resource information systems (HRIS) or human resource management systems (HRMS) that have emerged within just the past decade has made this question no longer a hypothetical but a real decision that most HR departments, third party administrators, carriers, and the like, are now faced with making routinely. CobraHelp being no exception. With there being both pros and cons no matter which side of the human/automated pendulum it swings, we here at CobraHelp were confronted with this dilemma a long time ago and we settled on a philosophy that we believe to be not only best practice, but also the most foolproof approach in minimizing systematic oversights and ensuring that our client base remains compliant within federal and state labor law regulations. A more in-depth summary of our philosophy was detailed in a previous blog post, but in short, CobraHelp is a firm believer that technological advancements in the HR space is the way of the future but that there still needs to be a balance of human governance overseeing automated HR technologies for the foreseeable future to avoid similar mistakes that Amazon is seeing with their automated LOA process.
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Perhaps the one silver lining to this pandemic for employers, if nothing else, is that it has forced companies to acknowledge holes or limitations in some of their operational procedures they would have otherwise never have noticed before - or conversely, they have discovered opportunities, such as employees being able to work seamlessly from home, that they never would have realized had it not been for this national state of emergency. It just goes to show that even positives can stem from what on the surface only appears as negatives.  

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