Image: © M. Perfectti/Stock.adobe.com
Like many tech giants, Amazon embraced remote and hybrid working during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the company claims it wants to embrace the benefits of office working next year.
Amazon has decided to take a stance against remote and hybrid working and wants its staff back in the office five days a week from the start of next year.
In a post shared with Amazon employees, CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to return to being in the office “the way we were before the onset of Covid” – five days a week. Jassy said this is part of a larger effort to strengthen the company’s “culture and teams”.
Amazon was one of various tech giants that switched to remote working as a way to maintain operations during the Covid-19 pandemic and its various lockdowns worldwide. For the last 15 months, the company has operated on a hybrid policy, asking staff to be in the office three days a week. Jassy claims this “strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of office working.
“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,” Jassy said.
“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 or if you already have a remote work exception approved through your s-team leader.”
Jassy said this new “expectation” will become active on 2 January 2025 as returning to the office five days a week may require adjustment time for some staff members.
There has been a discussion for years about the benefits of remote working – tech giants initially led the way in this area, but have been seen cracking down on these policies in recent years.
Some business leaders share a toxic rhetoric around remote working, flexible working and work-life balance in general – businessman Alan Sugar previously claimed that there is “no way” people work as hard at home compared to when they’re in the office.
Meanwhile, Ireland has been one of the top European countries embracing remote-working opportunities and the right to request remote working was brought into the country earlier this year.
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