Amazon said on Monday it would require employees to return to the office five days a week, effective 2 January.
“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Andy Jassy, the CEO, said in a note to employees.
The e-commerce giant’s previous office attendance requirement for its workers was three days a week. Amazon workers can claim “extenuating circumstances” or request exceptions from senior leadership, according to Jassy’s memo.
“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.” He cited improved collaboration and connection between teams as reasons for the new requirement as well as the ability to “strengthen our culture”.
As part of an organizational restructuring, Amazon is looking to reduce the number of managers in its organization and boost the number of individual contributors by the end of the first quarter of 2025 to reduce bureaucracy. Like other technology companies, Amazon grew rapidly at the start of the coronavirus pandemic then laid off wide swaths of its staff.
“We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements in locations that were previously organized that way, including the US headquarters locations (Puget Sound and Arlington),” Jassy said.
Since Covid lockdowns first forced workers home four years ago, employers and employees have clashed over how many days of the work week must be spent in the office. In May last year, employees at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters staged a walkout protesting against changes to the e-commerce giant’s climate policy, layoffs and a return-to-office mandate.
“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,” Jassy wrote. “Our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances.”