Amazon employees will return to work in the office like before the pandemic
17 September 2024 07:57
Amazon is asking its employees to return to the office five days a week starting in January, becoming the first major tech company to require a full week in the office after the pandemic, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports citing The Washington Post
CEO Andy Jesse announced the news in an email to employees on Monday, telling them they would have to comply with the new policy starting on 2 January. Prior to the changes, Amazon employees had to be in the office three days a week.
He stressed that returning to work in the office would help strengthen corporate culture, improve collaboration and knowledge sharing among colleagues.
Since the start of the pandemic, many companies have allowed employees to work from home, leaving offices in the centre of many cities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, nearly empty. But more than four years later, many of these companies have returned employees to the office, at least part-time. Even Zoom, which has helped tens of thousands of people work remotely, has encouraged people to return to the office on a part-time basis.
Other companies outside the tech sector that have cancelled remote work policies include Disney, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America.
Amazon’s new policy will be similar to the pre-pandemic era: employees may still have some exceptions to the rules, such as if their child is sick, they have an emergency, or they need to work in an isolated environment. But they will no longer be able to work from home two days a week for no reason unless they have a remote work exception approved by their manager.
The CEO also announced his intention to reduce the corporation’s executive echelon in order to cut red tape.
Moves like Amazon’s have implications, said Prithviraj Chowdhury, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies remote work. Chowdhury said research has shown that when companies abandon flexible work policies, they often lose the best employees and job candidates. It’s also often a way for companies to reduce headcount without layoffs.
