Amazon’s 6th RTO Mandate Loses Steam [DEC 2024]
On September 16, 2024, Amazon issued its sixth publicly-shared return-to-office (RTO) policy. But on December 16, 2024, Business Insider reported that Amazon may not have enough space for some employees in some locations.
Here’s everything you need to know about Amazon’s RTO policy.
Latest Amazon RTO Policy
September 2024:
According to CNBC, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a new memo instructing corporate employees to come into the office five days per week.
The new policy will go into full effect on January 2, 2025.
December 2024:
Some employees won’t be called back to the office on January 2 because “the company doesn’t have enough office space in certain locations.”
Amazon’s Return To Office: Current Policy
- Return To Office Date: January 2, 2025
- Location Policy: Office First
- Office Visit Expectations: 5 days/week (one of a handful of five-day RTO companies in the Fortune 500)
- Office Space Footprint: Decreasing
|
|
|
Amazon’s RTO Timeline
September 7, 2021: Delayed
“Amazon said it expects office workers in the U.S., U.K. and several other countries to resume working mostly on site the week of Sept. 7, according to an email sent to employees Thursday.”
January 3, 2022: Cancelled
“Corporate employees in the U.S. and some other countries will begin returning to the office beginning Jan. 3, 2022, the company confirmed to CNBC.”
Cancelled (No Official Return)
“On October 11, 2021, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company would no longer require corporate workers to return to the office” (source).
May 1, 2023: 3 days/week
“Amazon boss Andy Jassy is demanding a return to the office for the ‘majority’ of the company’s 300,000-strong corporate workforce, with an expectation that employees will spend ‘at least’ three days on site each week” (source).
May 31, 2023: Employees plan a walkout
“As tech-giant Amazon enforces its return-to-office mandate, some employees at the company’s headquarters in Seattle announced a planned walkout as frustrations grow.
Sent internally through an email, employees said they planned to “walk off the job” on May 31 (source).”
Amazon is facing employee pushback in multiple ways.
August 22, 2023: Employees must move near a hub
Amazon released a new policy that demands some employees (its not determined now many) must move near a central office hub to be with their team by the middle of 2024, or risk losing their jobs. “Under the guidelines, remote workers are expected to have completed their move to a main hub by the first half of 2024” (source).
July 2024: Employees may need to spend a certain amount of hours per week at an office
According to Seattle Times, “After more than a year of requiring employees to work from the office at least three days a week, Amazon is now considering a minimum number of hours per day to meet that mandate.”
September 16, 2024: Employees need to come in five days per week
According to CNBC, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a new memo instructing corporate employees to come into the office five days per week. The new policy will go into full effect on January 2, 2025.
December 16, 2024: Amazon may not have enough office space for everyone to return.
“Amazon is delaying the start of its strict new RTO policy for some employees because the company doesn’t have enough office space in certain locations, Business Insider has learned.”
Sentiment From Amazon Leadership
Stance on hybrid work
- Current sentiment: “…we’ve observed that it’s [the office] 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” (source).
- Original consensus (no longer valid): “We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office” (source).
Stance on remote work
- Outdated sentiment: “[Amazon CEO Andy Jassy] believes that this transition to online work was bound to happen sooner or later, and the pandemic only “accelerated people moving to the cloud by a few years” (source).
Stance on office space
- “Amazon has also cut back on the amount of space it had intended to lease from JPMorgan Chase & Co. at Hudson Yards, reducing the square footage it aims to take over” (source).
- “Amazon is pausing the construction of six new office buildings in Bellevue and Nashville to reevaluate the designs to suit hybrid work, the tech giant said on Friday” (source).
View All Return To Office Plans For The Fortune 500
Every month, we update every Fortune 100 company’s return-to-office policy. You can download the Fortune 100 RTO spreadsheet below.
RTO news & sentiment by company: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Bank Of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo |
