Working condition and productivity

Amazon has been criticized for its poor working condition by media and it is reported that there are several ambulance cars standing by outside its warehouses. Generally speaking, from my personal experience, Amazon probably is the firm that has the fastest delivery and the best customer experience in the UK, comparing with other firms and retailers. There have been many arguments surrounding how working condition relates to productivity.

Some people think that comfortable and relaxing working conditions help to improve workers' productivities. Some tech companies provide very nice offices and lots of free space and luxury room (such as kitchens, gyms) for their employees and believe such environment can encourage more innovation and invention which will create more values for the firms. However, on the other side some firms have very tough working conditions for their employees and even illegal make them work over time; some firms go even further by hiring child labours and paying very low wages. Such improper action is taken based on the will of cutting costs of production. These two kinds of behaivour seem to contradict each other, as one seems to believe that treating employees nicely can make them work hard, and the other seems to believe that pushing employees hard can make them work hard. However, both make sense and do not contradict each other. One aims to boost outputs by making employees more innovative and creative and the other aims to lower inputs by giving less to employees. Productivity is a measure of the ratio of outputs to inputs, either increasing outputs or decreasing inputs can improve productivities.

In general, firms tend to boost their outputs by treating their employees nicely when there are large potentials in their outputs, while they tend to lower their inputs by give less to their employees when there is little room to improve in their outputs.