Ellicott City Man Helps Keep Amazon Workers Healthy

ELLICOTT CITY, MD — As one of the highest ranking Asian American operations leaders at Amazon Logistics' DC Metro region, Daniel Lu of Ellicott City oversees the Lanham Delivery Station's warehouse and delivery operations, which includes supervising more than 500 associates and drivers. The delivery station happens to be the last time Amazon sees a package as it leaves there headed for a customer's home.

As one can imagine, juggling millions of packages can be physically demanding as well as mentally toiling. While most all jobs are stressful, Amazon has taken the initiative to protect and support its employees, like Lu and all those he supervises. WorkingWell is the company's new program that provides employees with physical and mental activities, wellness exercises and healthy eating support. The efforts are designed to help employees recharge and reenergize, with an end goal of reducing the risk of injury.

"The program is part of the company’s investment of more than $300 million into safety projects in 2021, and its mission to be Earth’s safest place to work. There are a number of components of WorkingWell, each of which was developed in collaboration with employees from within Amazon operations," Lu explained to Patch.

Aspects of WorkingWell piloted in the U.S. in 2019 and the program has since expanded to 859,000 employees at 350 sites in North America and Europe. By the end of 2021, WorkingWell will expand further to cover all of Amazon’s operations network in the U.S. with the aim of cutting recordable incident rates by 50 percent by 2025.

Emily Hawkins with Amazon told Patch that the health and safety of its employees is Amazon's No. 1 priority.

"The company works closely with health and safety experts and scientists, conducts thousands of safety inspections each day in its buildings, and has made hundreds of changes based on employee feedback to improve their well being at work, including development of the WorkingWell program," she said. "Similar to other jobs of this kind, about 40 percent of work-related injuries at Amazon are musculoskeletal disorders, which include sprains or strains caused by repetitive motions, and they’re more likely to occur among newer employees, many of whom might be working in a physical role for the first time."

Pilots of the WorkingWell program have reduced these injuries, Hawkins said, and have had a positive impact on regular day-to-day activities for employees outside of work.

"In fact, this program—along with other company initiatives focused on early MSD prevention—helped decrease MSD-related injuries by 32 percent from 2019 to 2020," she said.