Healthy express couriers: Tackling stress at work in a digital era

有证据表明，以工作绩效监测为目的的数字监控可能会对受监控的工人产生负面健康影响。尽管如此，工作场所监控正在成为一个快速增长的新就业领域的常态，该领域被称为在线到离线（O2O），与全球在线消费的激增密切相关。该行业的一个突出特点是数字优化操作，高效地对大量商品和服务进行分类和转移，并对每个步骤进行计时和跟踪。快递，包括快递包裹配送和外卖配送，是打通线上平台和实际配送地址最后一公里的关键。O2O也被称为零工经济或平台经济，通常是一个在线消费平台，雇用大量不稳定的劳动力。新兴的O2O行业出现了具有新特征的监控实践的显著增加，例如，使用可穿戴传感器进行跟踪，加强系统与被监控对象之间的关系。这些特点加在一起形成了一个紧张的工作环境，导致身心不健康。事实上，关于亚马逊、Uber Eats、饿了么、饿了么和美团的媒体报道继续在许多国家浮出水面，揭示了由于工作量过大、工作压力过大而对健康造成的影响，这也可能导致受伤、自杀企图和死亡。然而，目前很少或根本没有证据从观察和干预研究的影响，工作场所的监测对职业压力在这个新的部门，以提供支持，行业和政策制定者。为了理解和界定这一问题，我们选择中国的快递员作为目标人群，制定了一个系统层面的干预方案。我们这样做有两个原因。首先，中国是O2O电子商务的全球领导者，2017年在线销售额为8770亿美元，比2016年增长了28%。中国最大的在线平台阿里巴巴和美团收集的行业证据显示，2016年至少有650万快递员就业。我们于2019年3月在中国进行了初步的定性研究，发现目前的工作实践可能存在多种健康危害;由于压力和精神疾病、肌肉骨骼疾病、心血管和呼吸系统疾病、受伤以及其他慢性和急性疾病，年轻快递员在短短几年后就被迫离职。他们通常致力于数字优化的时间和路线计划，推动人类的边界。特别是对于外卖快递员来说，预计30分钟的交货时间和路线复杂性，例如，在高层建筑中，在高峰时段实现最佳效率是一项特别艰巨的任务。此外，中国的系统包括对速度和服务质量的奖励和惩罚。这有可能大大增加工作的压力。其次，职业健康和精神健康研究被中国国家卫生委员会确定为两个研究不足的优先领域。因此，该早期项目的主要目的是开发和试点干预计划，以减少由监控系统引起的快递员与工作相关的压力和相关的健康后果，以优化交付操作并监控绩效和记录客户反馈。我们的最终目标是在工作场所监控的主要研究中开发协议，使用可穿戴传感器为政策和实践提供信息，以改善对受监控工人的长期和短期健康影响。毫无疑问，这是一个全球性的和日益增长的现象，这项研究的结果将有利于在发展中国家和发达国家（包括英国）不断跟踪和监测的工作人群。

Evidence shows that digital surveillance for the purpose of performance monitoring at work can exert a negative health impact on the monitored workers. Nevertheless, workplace surveillance is becoming the norm in a fast growing new job sector called Online-to-Offline (O2O) that is closely associated with surging global online consumption. A prominent feature of this sector is a digitally optimised operation that sorts and shifts a massive amount of goods and services highly efficiently with each step timed and tracked. Express delivery, including express parcel delivery and takeaway delivery is the key to connecting the last mile between the online platform and actual delivery addresses. O2O is also loosely termed as gig economy or platform economy, typically structured as an online consumption platform employing a large, precarious workforce. The rising O2O sector has seen a significant increase in monitoring practices with new characteristics, e.g., tracking with wearable sensors that intensify the relationship between the system and the monitored. These features add up to a stressful working environment that contributes to physical and mental ill-health. Indeed, media reports on Amazon, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Eleme and Meituan continue to surface in many countries, revealing health implications due to excessive workload, work-related stress, which may also lead to injuries, suicide attempts and death. However, there is currently little or no evidence from observational and intervention research about the impact of workplace surveillance on occupational stress in this new sector to provide support to industry and policy makers. To understand and define the problem, we choose express couriers in China as the targeted population to develop a system-level intervention program. We do so for two reasons. First, China is the global leader of O2O e-commerce with $877.00 billion online sales in 2017, which grew by 28% compared with 2016. Industry evidence compiled by the largest online Chinese platforms Alibaba and Meituan suggests at least 6.5 million express couriers were employed in 2016. We conducted preliminary qualitative research in March 2019 in China and found that current working practice may present multiple health hazards; forcing young couriers to leave their jobs after only a few years due to stress and mental ill-health, musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, injuries and other chronic and acute conditions. They typically work to digitally optimized time and route schedules that are pushing human boundaries. Especially for takeaway couriers, with the expectation of 30 minutes lead time and route complication, e.g., high-rise building blocks, achieving optimised efficiency during peak hours is a particularly stressful task. In addition, the system in China include rewards and penalties for speed and quality of service. This has the potential to add significantly to the stressful nature of the job. Second, occupational health and mental health research have been identified by China's National Health Commission as two under-researched priority areas. Therefore, the main aim of this early phase project is to develop and pilot an intervention program to reduce work-related stress and associated health outcomes among express delivery couriers caused by surveillance systems to optimize delivery operation and monitor performance and record customer feedback. Our ultimate goal is develop protocols in the main study for workplace surveillance using wearable sensors to inform policy and practice in a way that it will ameliorate the long and short-term health consequences on monitored workers. It is undoubtedly a global and growing phenomenon and the outcome of this research will benefit working populations that are constantly tracked and monitored in both developing and developed countries, including the UK.