By Greg Bensinger
(Reuters) – Amazon.com will require its employees to return to the office five days a week starting next year, tightening the previous three-day requirement.
The change is needed to “invent, collaborate and connect,” CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a letter to employees posted on the company’s website Monday. He said the experience of a three-day mandate “reinforced our belief in the benefits” of working in the office.
Companies have been forcing large numbers of employees to work from home since the pandemic hit, leaving downtown offices in cities like San Francisco and Seattle largely empty. But some tech companies are starting to require employees to return to their offices two or three days a week.
Amazon has taken a tougher stance than many of its rivals as COVID-19 has become less of a daily threat. Workers have described to Reuters how Amazon has required them to report to, in some cases, distant offices or relocate to Seattle to keep their jobs.
And some workers who consistently failed to comply with the existing three-day mandate were told they were “voluntarily quitting” and locked out of Amazon’s systems. An Amazon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the new mandate would be as strict, and an employee Q&A shared with Reuters on Monday did not make that clear.
The mandate has proven deeply unpopular among a vocal group of workers who have said that working from home is both effective and saves time and money on commuting. In May of last year, workers at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters held a walkout to protest changes to the e-commerce giant’s climate policies, layoffs and a return-to-office mandate.
As part of an organizational restructuring, Amazon aims to increase the ratio of individual employees to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025. In the Q&A, Amazon said that “some organizations may identify roles that are no longer required,” without providing additional details.
According to the Q&A, Amazon is also eliminating a previous program that allowed employees to work from anywhere for four months a year.
(Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona and Sandra Maler)
