Amazon has told all its staff to return to the office five days a week next year joining a number of big firms cracking down on hybrid working.
In a memo to employees, chief executive Andy Jassy said the company expected people to be in the office full time outside of extenuating circumstances from January 2.
Amazon made it mandatory in 2023 for corporate staff to be in the office three days a week, a significant change after the Covid pandemic engendered a shift towards remote and hybrid working.
Other businesses are also cracking down on working from home as Spanish-owned Santander told its 10,000 UK office workers that they must be in the office at least 12 days a month by the end of 2024.
Tesco also told its admin staff in July that from September they would be required to work from the office a minimum of three days a week.
The UK branch of Amazon’s offices on 60 Holborn Viaduct, in London
Amazon has told all its staff to return to the office five days a week next year joining a number of big firms cracking down on hybrid working. Pictured is the Dublin office branch
And back in March, 3,900 office employees working for Boots in London, Nottingham and Surrey were ordered back to five days in a week starting from September.
Amazon chief executive Mr Jassy said the previous three days a week police had ‘strengthened our conviction about the benefits’ of being in the office full-time.
That policy led to some backlash last year among workers at Amazon, with more than 20,000 people signing a petition urging the firm to reconsider the return-to-office mandate.
Workers at its Seattle headquarters in the US staged a walkout which also followed widespread cost-cutting at the firm, with layoffs affecting thousands of jobs since late 2023.
Amanda Gearing, senior organiser for GMB, the trade union representing Amazon workers in the UK, said: ‘This is yet another example of how Amazon has won its reputation as one of the worst employers around.’
She said ‘record numbers’ of staff were joining the union, after a ballot of workers at its Coventry site for union recognition failed to reach a majority in July.
However, Mr Jassy stressed in his memo that the change would not force people to be in the office if they had extenuating circumstances, or if they had an agreement to work remotely with their manager.
‘Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week,’ he said.
‘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.’
Andy Jassy, Amazon President and CEO said the company expected people to be in the office full time outside of extenuating circumstances from January 2
But being back in the office would make the business ‘better set up to invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business’, Mr Jassy said.
Amazon will also bring back assigned desks, replacing hot-desking, in offices that were organised that way prior to the pandemic, including its head offices in the US.
Elsewhere, the chief executive also said he wanted to cut down the number of managers across the group in order to reduce layers of bureaucracy.
Having too many managers was creating unnecessary processes, meetings and layers which ‘waste valuable time’, he argued.
Amazon, like other tech companies, ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet demand from people locked down at home who were increasingly shopping online.
Amazon’s workforce, in warehouses and offices, doubled to more than 1.6 million people in about two years.
Mr Jassy said the firm wanted to increase the ratio of ‘individual contributors’ to managers by at least 15% by April 2025.
Other big firms are tracking the location of their staff to make sure they’re not logging in from abroad as part of a crackdown on remote working.
Consulting giant Deloitte has been accessing the data of some Work From Home (WFH) staff to see if they are actually doing their jobs from abroad without permission – and it’s not the only one.
Deloitte doesn’t track its employees but is notified when the firm’s data is accessed outside of the UK.
Consulting giant Deloitte has been accessing the data of some Work From Home (WFH) staff to see if they are actually doing their jobs from abroad without permission
PWC informed its 26,000 UK employees that it would start tracking their working location
Goldman Sachs also tracks ID swipes so it can crack down on employees who aren’t working in the office.
Employees at PwC have also been told they have to least three days a week either at the office or from client sites, and this will be monitored using their office swipe card data.
The firm informed its 26,000 UK employees that from January it would start tracking their working location.
A study has found that one in five staff get frustrated when they find out some of their co-workers are logging on to virtual meetings from the beach or beside the pool.
Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of staff have voiced their concerns that those who are abroad are not being as productive as workers who are still in the office.
The research, which was commissioned by price comparison website MoneySuperMarket, also found that a quarter of office-based workers said their colleagues abroad missed deadlines because of time-zone differences.