- Heather MacDougall, the vice president of worldwide workplace health and safety for
Amazon , gave us an inside look at Amazon's response to thecoronavirus pandemic. - She described how the company is tracking infections, developing new measures and technologies designed to protect workers, and trying to making decisions based on rapidly changing information.
- "I've learned in my first year with Amazon that there's speed in business, there's Amazon speed, and now there's pandemic speed," she said. "We've had to think fast and move quicker."
- Read the full interview with MacDougall here.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Amazon's head of safety, Heather MacDougall, gave us an inside look at what it has been like to manage the health of the company's massive global workforce amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Business Insider, MacDougall described how the company is closely tracking infections and employee quarantines within its ranks, discussed new technologies that Amazon is developing to improve safety, and revealed what could change permanently about how the company operates as a result of the pandemic.
"I've learned in my first year with Amazon that there's speed in business, there's Amazon speed, and now there's pandemic speed," she said. "We've had to think fast and move quicker."
When asked how closely Amazon is tracking new coronavirus infections among employees, she said:
"We are closely tracking COVID-19, including confirmed cases (symptomatic and asymptomatic), presumptive cases, suspected cases, third-party cases, and close contacts including quarantine cases. We are also sharing with employees when a confirmed case occurs in their facility.
We are focused on putting measures in place to ensure the spread of the virus is not occurring in our sites as these protective measures work to keep our employees' rate of infection less than that of the communities where they live.
We also track that through the rate of employees who are placed into quarantine (due to potential close contact exposure) per confirmed case. This is a very important metric to understand whether our health and safety processes designed to prevent the spread of the virus are working, such as social distancing.
We have seen the quarantine rate fall dramatically.
We aren't done though, we're continuing to innovate, exploring technology, such as through an app, to assist in reminding our people of the importance of social distancing — and providing reminders when they get too close. We look to also leverage this technology for alerting associates when we do have a confirmed case."