Amazon tells staff to get back to office five days a week
Amazon is mandating that employees return to the office full-time, ending its hybrid work policy, starting in January, according to a memo from CEO Andy Jassy. He stated, “We’ve decided to return to our pre-COVID office routine,” explaining that this move will enhance staff’s ability to innovate, collaborate, and stay connected.
Jassy, who has been skeptical of remote work, noted that employees were previously allowed to work from home two days a week.
The company’s push to reinstate in-office work has created tension within its global workforce of over 1.5 million. Last year, protests erupted at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters in response to stricter remote work policies, leading to the dismissal of a protest organizer, which has since been contested with labor officials.
In his recent communication, Jassy expressed concerns that Amazon’s corporate culture—once characterized by a start-up mentality—was being eroded by flexible work arrangements and excessive bureaucracy.
Mr Jassy, who replaced founder Jeff Bezos as chief executive in 2021, said he had created a “bureaucracy mailbox” for staff to make complaints about unnecessary rules and the company was asking managers to reorganise so that managers are overseeing more people.
Amazon said those changes could lead to job cuts
In addition to returning to the office five days a week, Amazon said it would be hot-desking in the US.
The company said staff could still work from home in unusual circumstances, such as a sick child or house emergency, as was the case before the pandemic.
But unless they have been granted an exemption, Mr Jassy said: “Our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances”.
Amazon’s stance contrasts with the UK government’s approach which has promised to make flexible working a default right from day one as part of a new employment rights bill due to be published next month.
Jonathan Reynolds told the Times newspaper that the government wants to end the “culture of presenteeism”, and said there were “real economic benefits” to people working from home.
He said there was a balance to be struck, but flexible working arrangements could help businesses recruit from a wider pool of people.
Remote work peaked during the pandemic. Many companies started recalling staff in 2022, but the return has been incomplete.
As of this summer, about 12% of full-time employees in the US were fully remote and another 27% reported having hybrid work policies in place, according to a monthly survey by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J Davis.
Bank bosses such as JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon have been among the most high-profile figures critical of remote work and likely to demand full-time office attendance.
But the attitude has also spread to other industries, with UPS and Dell recalling staff back to the office full-time this year.
In his memo, Mr Jassy said that Amazon’s experience with its move to a hybrid policy had “strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of working in person.
But Prof Bloom, a professor at Stanford, said he did not think the announcements were a sign of a wider shift in work policies, noting that his data has found time spent at the office has been fairly stable for more than a year.
“For every high profile company cancelling work-from-home, there’s others that seem to be expanding it – they just don’t get picked up in the media,” he said.
