Search This Blog
Powered by Blogger.

Blog Archive

Labels

Load More
Trendy Right Now

Popular Posts

Showing posts with label Employee Security. Show all posts
Workforce
Data Management Employee Security Robots Technology Workforce

Second Largest Employer Amazon Opts For Robots, Substituting 100,000 Jobs

 

Amazon.com Inc. is swiftly increasing the use of robotics, with over 750,000 robots functioning alongside its employees. 

There are 1.5 million people at the second-largest private company in the world. Even if it's a large number, it represents a drop of more than 100,000 jobs from the 1.6 million it had in 2021. In the meanwhile, the company employed 200,000 robots in 2019 and 520,000 in 2022. Amazon is gradually cutting back on employees whilst it adds hundreds of thousands of robots annually. 

The robots, which include new models such as Sequoia and Digit, are designed to execute repetitive duties, boost productivity, safety, and delivery speed for Amazon customers. Sequoia, for example, speeds inventory management and order processing at delivery centres, whereas Digit, a bipedal robot developed in collaboration with Agility Robotics, handles positions such as transporting empty tote boxes. 

Amazon's significant investment in robots illustrates the company's commitment to supply chain innovation as well as its belief in the synergistic potential of human-robot collaboration. Despite the vast amount of automation, Amazon stresses that deploying robots has led to the creation of new skilled job categories at the company, mirroring a larger industry trend of integrating innovative technologies with human workforces. 

Amazon's deployment of more than 750,000 robots marks a huge step towards automation at the world's second-largest employer. The move has the potential to drastically alter job dynamics within the organisation and outside. While Amazon claims that robots are designed to collaborate with human employees, assisting them with repetitive chores to increase productivity and workplace safety, concerns about job displacement and the consequences for the workforce are unavoidable. 

The tech giant's integration of robots like Sequoia and Digit into its fulfilment centres is part of a larger drive to enhance supply chain operations using innovative technologies. The robots are intended to streamline processes and provide quicker delivery times to customers. The company emphasises that robotic solutions promote workplace safety and enable it to provide a wider range of products for same-day or next-day delivery. 

The introduction of so many robots into the workplace raises concerns about the future role of human labour in Amazon's operational paradigm. Many people are concerned about the impact on occupations, particularly highly repetitive tasks that could be easily mechanised. Research from universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that industrial robots have a major detrimental impact on workers, hurting jobs and salaries in the areas where they are deployed. The broader discussion of automation's economic and political ramifications emphasises common concerns about job displacement and the possibility of higher income inequality. 

Despite these worries, Amazon has noted the emergence of 700 categories of skilled job kinds that did not previously exist at the company, implying that automation can also result in the creation of new forms of employment prospects. This change in Amazon's workforce may indicate a shift in the nature of labour, with human employees moving towards more complicated, non-repetitive jobs that demand higher levels of ability and creativity.
Read more »
Workplace Security
Business Cyber Security Employee Security Workplace Security

Four-Day Working Week: A Cybersecurity Challenge or New Opportunity?


Four-day working: A new challenge?

The new year brings a window for change. As we set resolutions and decide to build good habits, the companies are also carefully taking steps in which they can improve their work and functioning. 

Recently, many of these goals are focused around improving the employee experience (EX). From emerging onboarding processes and promoting candid communications, to making a process of authentic and meaningful performance reviews, companies following a proactive approach to EX have made a great number of advancements in the past few years. 

As recession looms over and the skills gap is growing further, EX is a trend that will only keep gaining momentum as business leaders find innovative ways in which to attract and keep top talent. 

How can a four-day working week help cybersecurity?

To date, shorter working weeks are being used as a trial by a large number of enterprises. Non-profit 4 Day Week Global in October 2022 announced that it had provided help to 60 North American firms cumulatively getting over 4,000 people to make the shift to a four-day working week. 

From lower costs to happier employees, the possible benefits are obvious. And while employees' well-being is mostly at the core of the 4-day week, the fact that there's no pay loss with such initiatives tells us there would not be any dampening of expectations with association to employee performance and output. '

In this matter, a 4-day working week will probably mean stuffing 40-hour workloads into 32-feasible for some, but a reason for worry in cases where this is simply not realistic. 

Risks associated with a four-day working week?

There is a major challenge that such a drastic change could actually add to the threat of exhaustion among those employees looking to find relief in high-pressure work environments, making responsibilities sweep away under the rug in areas where there's no room for cutting corners. 

With the same responsibilities and not much time to complete them, organizations will have to give something away- not the core activities based upon which an employee's individual performance is measured. But, security practices will soon start to get affected and will fall behind, and employees will be pressurized due to working in a shorter week. 

Tech Radar reports "Now more than ever before, it is critical that sound security practices are not undermined. The COVID-19 pandemic brought about years of change in the ways in which companies operate. According to a 2020 McKinsey Global Survey of executives, organizations accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions as well as their internal operations by three to four years in the space of just a few months. And that trajectory only continued through 2021 and 2022."
Read more »
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)