Amazon workers will be expected to return to the office five days a week starting in January, CEO Andy Jassy has announced.
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In a message to employees posted on the company’s website, Jassy said he was implementing the change in order to help workers more effectively collaborate. The shift from the minimum of three days a week imposed in May 2023 will take effect on January 2, 2025.
Jassy wrote in the message that he felt the full-time in-person footing would benefit Amazon’s culture and help the company “to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business.”
Amazon has had a wild ride through the Covid years, experiencing a massive boom during lockdowns in 2020 and into 2021 but then having to lay off 27,000 workers as the world reopened in 2022 and 2023. Jassy, who took over from Jeff Bezos as CEO in 2022, added personal emphasis to his message. He noted he has worked at the tech company for 27 of its 29 years of existence. He joined Amazon when it had $15 million in annual revenue, compared with its current pace for north of $600 billion. He said he and senior leaders have closely examined the company’s operations and staffing in search of ways to achieve greater results.
Other major companies have committed to full-time office plans in recent months as the toll of the pandemic becomes clear in the commercial real estate markets and several major U.S. cities. In Hollywood and the media business, many leading companies have set the bar at three or four days a week in the office.
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“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” he wrote. “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another. If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”
Before Covid, he noted, “not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week. If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely. This was understood, and will be moving forward as well. But, 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.”
Certain employees, he acknowledged, have had a “remote work exception” approved by their supervisor.
“We understand that some of our teammates may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office consistently five days per week will require some adjustments,” Jassy added. In addition to the in-office requirement, flexible desk arrangements will also largely give way to assigned workspaces.
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