Amazon Orders Staff Back to Office Five Days a Week

Amazon has told staff they must return to the office five days a week from 2 January next year.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of Covid,” chief executive Andy Jassy told Amazon employees on Monday. “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaboration, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective.”

Previously, Amazon has made employees work from the office at least three days a week, which the company said “has strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of being physically at work. 

“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward,” Jassy said.

Exceptions will however be made for employees with an unwell child, family emergencies or coding projects that need a distraction-free environment.

At the end of 2023, Amazon had about 1.5 million full-time and part-time employees, according to regulatory filings. 

However, one Amazon staff member told colleagues in an internal message seen by Business Insider, “This is not 'going back' to how it was before. It's just going backwards."

The company may also face a pushback from some staff.

Last year, employees at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters staged a walkout partly in protest at the group’s return-to-office mandate. 

Amazon ordering US workers back to the office full-time flies in the face of the push for compressed working hours and flexible working. 

The UK government, for example, is set to make flexible working and compressed hours the default for workers in its employment rights bill due to be published next month.

No more hot-desking

Amazon also said it will end hot-desking and bring assigned floor plans in its US buildings - although the practice will continue in Europe.

“The advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy continued. 

Yet back in 2020, Jassy - who replaced founder Jeff Bezos as chief the following year - believed that hot desking was the future of offices. Free-floating desks help companies save money because they mean smaller office footprints.

Jassy also announced a “bureaucracy mailbox” for staff to report “unnecessary and excessive process or rules [that] should be called out or extinguished”.

Layers of management will also be removed to cut back on unnecessary meetings, increasing the ratio of individual staff to managers by 1% by the end of the first quarter next year.

However, one Amazon staff member told colleagues in an internal message seen by Business Insider, “This is not 'going back' to how it was before. It's just going backwards."

The company may also face a pushback from some staff.

Last year, employees at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters staged a walkout partly in protest at the group’s return-to-office mandate. 

Amazon ordering US workers back to the office full-time flies in the face of the push for compressed working hours and flexible working. 

The UK government, for example, is set to make flexible working and compressed hours the default for workers in its employment rights bill due to be published next month.

No more hot-desking

Amazon also said it will end hot-desking and bring assigned floor plans in its US buildings - although the practice will continue in Europe.

“The advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy continued. 

Yet back in 2020, Jassy - who replaced founder Jeff Bezos as chief the following year - believed that hot desking was the future of offices. Free-floating desks help companies save money because they mean smaller office footprints.

Jassy also announced a “bureaucracy mailbox” for staff to report “unnecessary and excessive process or rules [that] should be called out or extinguished”.

Layers of management will also be removed to cut back on unnecessary meetings, increasing the ratio of individual staff to managers by 1% by the end of the first quarter next year.

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