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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has informed all corporate staff they must start working from the office five days per week.
The e-commerce executive informed employees in a detailed memo Monday, upping their in-office requirements from three days per week.
Employees will have until January 2 to begin complying with the new return-to-office (RTO) mandate, unless they are subject to “extenuating circumstances” or have been granted an exception by a small number of executives that oversee Amazon’s different units.
In the same memo, Jassy also revealed Amazon’s plans to alter its organizational structure, reducing the number of managers to “remove layers and flatten organizations.” By the end of Q1 2025, the executive hopes to ensure each organization has increased its ‘individual contributor’ to manager ratio by 15%.
Amazon previously had a three-day-per-week in-office mandate, which it attempted to enforce in a crackdown on “coffee badging” by tracking the amount of hours employees spent in the office.
Why is Amazon making employees go back to the office five days a week?
Amazon’s CEO began the memo by stating his expectation that the changes would “strengthen our culture and teams.” The company’s culture is “unique,” Jassy wrote, but added said that improving it is an ongoing priority for the company’s leadership.
“We want to operate like the world’s biggest start-up. That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply-connected collaboration (you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other.”
Jassy highlighted to areas of concern for Amazon. Firstly, whether the company has the right organizational structure to deliver ownership and speed, and secondly, whether the company is set up to “invent, collaborate, and be connected enough.”
On the first concern, Amazon’s leadership believe that quick and substantial headcount growth in recent years, and the introduction of processes like “pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings,” have created excessive bureaucracy at the company, which it hopes to eliminate by removing managers and calling staff back to the office.
Jassy has also introduced a “bureaucracy mailbox” where staff can point out areas of inefficiency and “unnecessary process” that get in the way of quick work.
His memo indicates that Amazon has introduced the new in-office mandate to address the second concern. “To address the second issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business, we’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” Jassy said.
“We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another,” the memo continued.
To facilitate the new RTO mandate, Amazon will bring back assigned desk locations, indicating that it does not see ‘hot desking’ – a flexible model for office seating that allows any employee to use any desk for any time – as a useful approach to in-office work.
How are Amazon employees reacting to the office mandate?
Amazon’s mandate for employees to work from the office five days per week has drawn criticism from some staff at the e-commerce company.
According to a report from Business Insider, one employee writing in a company Slack channel disagreed with Jassy’s claim that the company was going back to its pre-COVID work model, arguing the new mandate is much more tightly enforced.
"Please do note that this is (in a lot of cases) significantly more strict and out of its mind than many teams operated under pre-covid. This is not 'going back' to how it was before. It's just going backwards."
"What ever happened to 'Striving to be Earth's Best Employer," another worker wrote, referencing a leadership principle at Amazon.
Another employee quipped: "Can I negotiate my manager to PIP me… Take my money and leave?"
Other staff members questioned the implications this could have on flexible working at Amazon, including whether it would allow staff to leave their work at the office. "So if I go in 5x week, that means I can leave my laptop at work right?" one employee asked.
HR professionals react to Amazon’s office mandate
The move to scrap its hybrid work model has also drawn attention from other HR professionals. Justina Raskauskiene, Human Resources Team Lead at e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend, told HR Grapevine that removing the opportunity for remote work may harm Amazon’s long-term performance in the job market, including its ability to attract elite talent. “The choice of future candidates will be limited to people working in certain cities that have Amazon offices,” she stated.
Research has indicated that strict RTO mandates, when not supported by employees, could be costing companies some of their most talent and highest-ranking employees.
“Removing opportunities for flexible work is also detrimental to the ongoing battle to attract and retain talent, particularly at times of ongoing skills shortage challenges faced by the tech sector,” Barbara Matthews, Chief People Office at Remote, suggested to HR Grapevine. “Large corporations that attempt to revert to inflexible working practices will ultimately shrink their talent pool when seeking new skills and will become less attractive to employees who are increasingly prioritizing flexible work options.”
Raskauskiene also echoed concerns from Amazon employees that going back to the office could disproportionately affect those who previously benefitted from flexible work, including working parents.
“Working remotely saves commuting time, meaning going back to the office could be a deal breaker for some of the current Amazon employees,” she explained. “This is especially the case for employees with childcare commitments who may choose to vote with their feet to find another remote position,” adding that the gains proposed by Jassy in collaboration and teamwork may be offset by a drop in productivity by those who find it easier to get individual tasks done faster at home.
Matthews supports this view and stated that “an increasing number of large corporations are making the mistake of rowing back on flexible work policies, signalling a belief that employees need to be physically present and monitored by managers in order to be productive.”
According to Matthews, this can “lay a sour foundation for the relationship between management and employees, leaving employees feeling mistrusted and encouraging a culture of presenteeism, which in turn can negatively impact productivity.”
Raskauskiene does recognize, however, that the speed of decision-making and the quality of communication may improve at Amazon following the move. “Some companies notice that in-person communication is much more efficient, leading to quicker decision-making. Many problems can be solved simply by meeting a colleague in the office kitchen and discussing all the questions in person,” she said.
“Team productivity and cohesion, in my view, are also stronger when working on-site. There is a smaller chance of misunderstandings, which are common when you are only discussing subjects online,” Raskauskiene continued. “In addition, non-remote work helps organisations more easily nurture company culture. For example, as someone working in human resources, I find training much more effective than doing so remotely, because it is easier to ensure that employees are not distracted.”
