Amid the Coronovirus debacle, many large organisations have taken action to effectively deal with the situation. Amazon India has also presented its stance against COVID-19 by publically posting their response and actions taken on their blog. The eCommerce giant mentioned that they have been closely monitoring the situation. Thousands of people have been affected by this, and a thousand others are dealing with changes in their respective fields such as their school, offices or the place they live at. Here are some important steps that Amazon India is taking to support customers, employees and communities during these hard times.
Serving the customers
Amazon believes they have a critical role to service customers and community during this time, and they want to assure people that they’ll get the items they need, at the right time. With the rise of COVID-19, Amazon has seen a rise in people shopping online. This impacts the way they serve the customers, but in the short term only. You might have noticed a lot of items are out of stock on Amazon at the moment. Items that are under popular brands, especially household items. You can also see that the delivery time has also extended for the same products, in general, compared to earlier delivery times. But Amazon has assured that they have been working around the clock to improve this situation and make essential items available as soon as possible. Amazon will bring in additional capacity to deliver all orders in time to fight this setback.
Amazon has also ensured its customers that they are closely watching every product and their prices and will ensure that no one raises the prices on basic need products during the time of need. They have been blocking or removing thousands of items who have been found to do the same. They ensure that they have been actively monitoring their store and remove offers or products that violate their policies.
Caring for our employees
Amazon also explained they have been continuously working with the authorities of India and other countries to ensure that they have been taking the right precautions and successfully implementing the right preventative health measure for their employees.
Amazon mentioned:
“In light of ongoing international COVID-19 developments, we now recommend that all global employees who work in a role that can be done from home, do so through the end of March. Every team is different and not all jobs are conducive to working from home. Employees and partners whose work requires their physical presence in their workplace, have access to all of their usual paid and unpaid time-off benefits.”
“All Amazon employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine will receive up to two weeks of pay. This additional pay while away from work is to ensure employees have the time they need to return to good health without the worry of lost income. This is in addition to unlimited unpaid time off for all hourly employees through the end of March.”
Amazon has cancelled all of their large events and changed the majority of their job interviews to virtual interviews instead of taking in-person interviews, which requires candidates to travel to office locations. At the same time, they have also increased cleaning every facility on a global scale, including sanitizing every door handle, stairway rails, button on the elevator, lockers and touch screens.
Safeguarding our Fulfillment Network & Delivery teams
Amazon is working closely with medical experts to ensure the right precautions are being taken for their associates and delivery partners at their sites. As mentioned by Amazon:
- We have paused visitor entry into our fulfilment centres and have increased the frequency and intensity of cleaning at all operations sites across India.
- All our associates are required to stay home and seek medical attention if they are feeling unwell.
- We are continuing to raise awareness and educate our employees and associates to adhere to preventive hygiene practices.
- We have communicated that everyone must wash their hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing their nose, coughing, or sneezing.
- If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.
- We will continue to work with trucking and delivery partners to ensure they are supporting their employees during this time.
Amazon has also been helping their communities around the world. For example, in China, they leveraged their fulfilment network to donate millions of items like isolation suits, masks, disposable gloves and other necessary medical supplies. You can get the latest information regarding Amazon’s COVID-19 by following @AmazonNews_IN on Twitter.
