Amazon expands gamification program that encourages warehouse employees to work harder
Amazon expands gamification program that encourages warehouse employees to work harder
Amazon expands gamification program that encourages warehouse employees to work harder
By Nick Statt
March 15, 2021
Summary
Amazon is expanding an existing program that gamifies warehouse work to encourage its fulfillment center employees to improve their efficiency and compete against others for digital rewards like virtual pets, according to a new report from The Information.
It's been known since at least 2019 that Amazon uses gamification in the form of workstation games to try to incentivize employees to improve productivity, but The Information reports that Amazon is now expanding those methods to warehouses in at least 20 states throughout the country.
"Employees have told us they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, and we're excited to be taking their feedback and expanding the program to even more buildings throughout our network," Kent Hollenbeck, an Amazon spokesperson, tells The Information.
Some employees quoted in the report say the games are popular because they can help cut down on the tediousness and repetition of a nearly half-day warehouse shift.
Others fear it's one step toward an even more sinister and dystopian metrics system designed to track employees and encourage them to work as hard and fast as possible.
One employee recalled the image of humans measured through gamification metrics in the infamous season 1 episode of British science fiction show Black Mirror, "Fifteen Million Merits," in which people cycled on exercise bikes for enough tokens to compete on a talent show-style reality TV program.
As The Washington Post reported in 2019, some employees have used FC Games performance to ask for more so-called swag bucks, a proprietary Amazon currency that can be exchanged for company merchandise like T-shirts and water bottles.
The Information report also says that during busy holiday rushes, warehouse employees can win pricey consumer electronics, like game consoles or an Apple Watch, by performing well.
The games themselves are not designed to reward employees with tangible, real-world benefits, the report says, and are instead ways for Amazon to encourage productivity as warehouse work becomes increasingly more tedious.
In many cases, robots fetch items and bring them to humans to sort, and Amazon has not shied away from its ambitions to automate large swaths of its warehouse work in the future.
Reference
Statt, N. (2021, March 15). Amazon expands GAMIFICATION program that encourages warehouse employees to work harder. Retrieved June 20, 2021, from https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/15/22331502/amazon-warehouse-gamification-program-expand-fc-games