(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy is ordering his employees to return to the office five days a week beginning in January. But the policy isn’t airtight.
The company, which previously required employees to badge in three days a week, will make exceptions for managers already approved for fully remote positions, Jassy said in a Monday note to employees. Flexibility for health concerns and other special situations would also continue.
“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 — our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances,” he wrote, referencing workers with sick children, house emergencies or those needing a “day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment.”
Mandated policies, however, don’t always translate into full-scale adherence.
“The issue with RTO is compliance,” said Prithwiraj Choudhury, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies remote work. “You might have a memo, but how do you ensure people follow your memo?”
Amazon joins a number of other high-profile companies, like Citigroup Inc., Walmart Inc., and carmaker Stellantis NV, in tightening return-to-office requirements in the last several months. At some of the companies, those who didn’t agree to come back to an office were let go.
Even so, the amount of time workers spend working in offices hasn’t ticked up all that much since the beginning of last year. Offices across the US are still only about half as full as they were before the pandemic, according to badge swipe data from security firm Kastle Systems.
That’s partly because work norms and practices have changed so substantially since the pandemic. In the US, people worked remotely about one or two days a month before 2020, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Four years on, people “are now used to working in a different way,” Choudhury said. “Exceptions might become the norm.”
Choudhury said he expects some of Amazon’s top performers to quit as a result of Jassy’s newest mandate. He also said a shift back to stricter in-office rules could impact the company’s ability to attract women and people of color. Researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that job postings that advertise remote work attract a substantially more diverse pool of applicants.
Still, many CEOs around the world are digging in.
Chris Ellison, CEO of Australian mining company Mineral Resources Ltd. said he has a “no work-from-home” policy and a headquarters office with a cafe, restaurant, gym, daycare, and wellness center. “I don’t want them leaving the building,” he said on an earnings call last month. “I want to hold them captive all day long.”
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
