The COVID-19 work-from-home era is over, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has told staff in a Monday memo, signaling his desire for staff to return to working in an office five days a week.
The chief exec said the hybrid model of working partially at home and the rest in the office, which has been running for the past 15 months at the internet superpower, will come to an end January 2, 2025. At that point, staff will be expected to come in full time, with some exceptions granted, and hot-desking will be canceled – except for those departments that had it before the coronavirus upended everything.
“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 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.”
While Jassy doesn’t explicitly say “come back or there’ll be trouble,” he has in the past. In an in-house Q&A with staff last year, he opined that if someone couldn’t commit to a three-day return-to-office “it’s probably not going to work out for you at Amazon.” Imagine how he feels about staff not doing the same for a five-day working week.
Jassy also said there would be at least a 15 percent increase in the ratio of staff to managers by the end of Q1 next year.
“Fewer managers will remove layers and flatten organizations more than they are today,” he opined.
Fewer managers will remove layers and flatten organizations
“If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates’ ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day.”
To speed this process along Amazon is setting up a “bureaucracy mailbox” where employees can send in suggestions for useless red tape and processes that could be deleted. Jassy said he would read each of these missives personally.
We’re sure no one would dream of asking in those little notes how many days a week the chief is in the office on average. ®