8 billion USD annual attrition costs, 150% or maybe “just” 100% staff turnover, but at least double the industry standard. These are alarming figures reported for the logistics operations of Amazon (even when they are not confirmed by the company itself). The processmining community, as we have met this week at Celosphere in Munich, could get excited by the improvement potential, which such figures are indicating. Thoughts are starting immediately to try to look deeper and find root causes and inefficiencies. There have to be some …
But hold on. The fight against inefficiencies and therefore the obsession of productivity is already the mantra of Amazon’s way of management (besides the customer centricity). The trouble to attract new personal shown in another report is confirming Paracelsus “The dose makes the poison”, overdoing an in general useful measure can be toxic. So turning back to process mining the results any analysis can be used in different directions, they are dual use items so to say: Either to put more pressure on the execution or to improve the situation sustainably by also improving the working conditions. There is always a choice.
Looking at further research about Amazon shows the request to “regulate workplace electronic monitoring”, which indicates that misuse (from perspective of the study) is already happening. As the data required for process mining can obviously be considered as “workplace electronic monitoring“ it is not only the more ethical approach to look after the sustainable change, it is even the prerequisite for all further work. All stakeholders need to see the benefits of process mining, otherwise buy-in, support and data availability get stopped rather quickly.
So we need to find solutions with benefits for all involved parties: the customer gets a better fulfillment, the employee gets better working conditions and the company and its shareholders get reduced costs. A sustainable change needs progress on all those dimensions.
PS: It is not my intention to offense a particular company, here Amazon, rather having an example based on public figures. Also it doesn’t matter, if process mining or other techniques are used to identify topics and drive the change. So please look at the principle and focus less on the example used for illustration.