AI Managing Amazon's Flex HR Terminations
Amazon’s AI-powered HR workforce suffered a malfunction on Monday, leading to it mistakenly firing a number of its Flex drivers, as the company’s independent contractors are placed under the control of a questionable system.
Amazon Flex is a new Amazon service allowing individuals to deliver products. The e-commerce giant initiated the program back in 2015 to deal with bundles of packages in a short period of time for their Prime Now Service.
In spite of these concerns, Amazon was disinterested with the bad reputation triggered by this issue and rebuffed any claims against its program proclaimed by its employees.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the program became an essential element for Amazon’s retail logistics program, to the extent that Amazon offered its drivers a measurable bonus to work 20 hours during December 2020.
In parallel, drivers must register their personal information via the program’s app, leading to their shifts’ information, coordinate deliveries, and monitoring any issues they might encounter during their delivery to prevent any misconduct from both parties.
The company previously and continuously disproves any idea concerning the maltreatment of their employees, as they are deeply invested in the tech world and its resources to equip their drivers with visibility and eligibility endlessly deliver the best services, any Amazon spokesperson had stressed.
During an interview with Bloomberg, previously dismissed drivers reported an opaque system often leaves them wondering why their ratings witnessed a drastic drop, leading to the termination of their accounts.
Even more so, a former employee’s rating suffered a hard fall due to reasons out of their control, leading to their account’s termination for violating of Amazon’s terms of service. To which the employee appealed the termination, but Amazon failed to take action.
Another technical aspect dominating this issue is the company’s demand for selfies to prevent people from sharing a single account and using different online accounts to steal packages. Eventually, this hindered drivers from delivering packages faster.
Selfies requirements for Flex drivers are embedded with complaints concerning selfies not meeting the program’s requirements as the images appear to be approved or rejected by the program’s image recognition program.
While Amazon seems to be battling with their employees on the frontline, it has not been recognized within their userbase, as the program’s app was downloaded 200,000 times, according to market intelligence and insights firm SensorTower.
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