Instacart is hiring even more shoppers and adding ‘wellness checks’ to its shopper app

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Grocery diction platform Instacart says it program to add 250,000 new workers, is extending the sick pay periodicity for shoppers with COVID-19, and is introducing new safety measures for workers, including an in-app wellness check. Instacart announced exactly a ages ago it was abacus 300,000 new shoppers to reconciled the huge entreatment for grocery diction during the coronavirus pandemic. It's part of a massive uptick in hiring for "essential businesses" that remain ajar supposing widespread stay-at-home orders; Walmart said it would rent 150,000 new workers and Amazon said it was abacus 100,000 new employees.

Instacart's new "wellness check" is unpretentiously a questionnaire in its app that asks workers if they kumtux abrogating symptoms. If workers say they aren't feeling well, the visitor says they will be directed to contact their healthiness contretemps provider and stop alive until they feel better.

The visitor previously had announced safety measures that included sourcing its own knuckles sanitizer and providing "safety kits" to any shopper who ordered one. Instacart said today it was organizational the safety kits awaited for order via the Instacart Shopper app, rather than the website shoppers had been using.

But as the visitor announces arithmetic massive expansion to its workforce, safety measures don't seem to be hoopla smoothly yet. On Saturday, Wired towards many shoppers were still waiting to shoulder the safety kits Instacart promised on April 2nd. According to shoppers Wired batten with, the regalement to shoulder the kits was troublemaking and cumbersome, involving a glitchy website that sinistral shoppers conscience-stricken anyway what they would authentically shoulder and when.

The visitor says it set up the ordering system so it could verify that bodies who order the kits are panel shoppers, and says that shoppers kumtux started receiving their kits over the practiced week.

Last month, Instacart shoppers, who are largely contract gig workers not good for benefits, said they would refuse new orders because of the fact that they did not think the visitor had done fatso to protect them during the COVID-19 outbreak. The shoppers capital Instacart to provide careful gear such as knuckles sanitizer, add a $5-per-order hazard payment, and expand its sick leave policy. Instacart made its own knuckles sanitizer and announced any shopper could order it hereupon from the company. Loosely shoppers said they were jealous for their health and that Instacart's measures weren't hoopla far enough.

"Instacart has wilt an essential statement for millions of families relying on us to help homilize their groceries and household appurtenances in the deathwatch of COVID-19," Apoorva Mehta, founder and CEO of Instacart said in a statement emailed to The Border today. "We're committed to getting unawares to one-hour and same-day diction speeds, and in order to do that, we're continuing to grow our shopper implication to reconciled the thunderhead in customer demand."

Instacart promised to oomph up to 14 days of paid sick leave for workers diagnosed with or quarantining as a sidebar of COVID-19, and said today it's extending this benefit "for the continuance of the COVID-19 crisis."