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When Amazon’s five-days-per-week return-to-office (RTO) mandate hit the headlines last week, it’s safe to say that its staff – as well as plenty of HR experts – were far from happy about it.
One worker summed things up rather neatly in one of the company’s Slack channels: “What ever happened to 'Striving to be Earth's Best Employer’” they quipped.
Other employees questioned CEO Andy Jassy’s assertion in the memo that Amazon would “return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” with one worker suggesting the new mandate was far stricter than any pre-2020 requirements. Another asked whether that meant employees could leave their laptops in the office when finishing up for the day.
But now Amazon has a bigger issue on its hands. What started as a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek comments has now snowballed into an anonymous survey distributed across a company Slack channel with over 30,000 employees.
Unfortunately for Jassy & co, it’s not a good look. As of Tuesday afternoon, according to a report by Fortune, the average satisfaction rating for the RTO mandate recorded by respondents was 1.4 on a scale of one to five, one “strongly dissatisfied” and five being “strongly satisfied.”
Employee-led survey isn’t a good look for Amazon
Before we get into the implications of the survey for Amazon, there are a few points to clarify.
Firstly, let’s remember to take the headline results with a hefty bucket of salt. The Slack channel in which the survey was circulated was set up when Amazon announced an initial three-day RTO mandate in 2023. With an audience heavily biased against in-office mandates, the results are significantly skewed and aren’t a fully accurate reflection of the full spread of attitudes held by Amazon employees—though they probably come pretty close.
Secondly, Amazon’s executive leadership team is of course perfectly within its rights to call staff back to the office if it believes that is the best model for the business, and with the new mandate coming into effect from January 1, employees do have a reasonable lead time to up sticks and find a new role elsewhere. Granted, the job market is not exactly sunshine and roses right now, but it’s hard to lay that entirely at Mr Jassy’s door.
Those two caveats aside, it’s impossible to overlook that Amazon seemingly made this monumental decision that majorly impacts the lives of its employees, without talking to them about it first.
After a chunk of preamble about Jassy’s own perceptions of Amazon’s culture, the memo eventually begins to get into the heart of the issue—why he and his leadership team feel a full-time in-office mandate is right for the company.
“Two areas that the s-team and I have been thinking about…” he begins. At no point do we get the suggestion that this conversation is one that was had with any employees in the room; with any working parents or staff with caring responsibilities able to share their account of how flexible working benefits them; with any workers who find they are more productive outside of a busy office environment.
Amazon wants to be ‘Earth’s Best Employer’ – surely that should begin with listening
The fact that this survey is seemingly the first opportunity most Amazon staff have had to meaningfully weigh in with their input on returning to the office - and that it was set up by employees themselves out of frustration, rather than by the company’s people leaders – is surely a big red flag in Amazon’s journey to be ‘Earth’s Best Employer.’
The creators of the survey say they did so to provide the company’s leadership with “clear insight into the impact of this policy on employees, including the challenges identified and proposed solutions.”
Those words that should have come from Amazon’s HR department months before any change was decided upon, rather than from employees in a last-ditch attempt to have their voices heard.
“We are seeking honest, constructive feedback on the recent decision to require a 5-day return to the office schedule,” the survey begins. Given the monumental shift in how Amazon’s leadership is asking staff to do its work, it is disappointing that employees were not given the platform to share their genuine concerns which could have led to a better and more productive employee experience for all.
Yes, the results may be skewed, but perhaps if the survey had been run by an employee listening team, rather than employees themselves, the data (qualitative and quantitative) would have revealed attitudes across the workforce and highlighted potential problems.
One employee speaking to Fortune, for example, raised the issue of working with colleagues across many time zones. “With RTO, they no longer have the flexibility to easily shift hours and collaborate. 3 day had an instant impact here, and 5 day will only be worse,” they pointed out.
How many other issues could have been raised well ahead of any mandate through continuous, varied, and in-depth forms of employee listening?
Amazon's one-way communication risks employee revolt
In a memo that preaches on the collaboration, connection, and communication that being in-office five days per week purportedly brings, it’s ironic that all these components were seemingly missing from the decision-making process itself.
After all, it’s 2024. The employee listening technology market is booming, and thanks to AI, analyzing the sentiment of huge employee feedback datasets is not the challenge it once was!
But now Amazon’s leadership may pay the price. Remember how many of those traditional change management models, still so relevant today, emphasize the importance of communication and building support.
There have already been several examples already in 2024 that indicate troubled waters may be brewing for the e-commerce giant, such as the major drop-off in Dell’s e-NPS score post-RTO mandate.
Amazon employees are right to be dissatisfied, not just because they are having trust and flexibility stripped away, but because the decision to do so was made without their voices being heard.
