Amazon orders staff back to the office five days a week

Workers told to be ‘joined at the hip with your teammates’

Amazon is to make its white-collar workers turn up at the office five days a week, as tech giants increasingly try to cajole workers back to the office.
In a message sent to Amazon employees on Monday, Andy Jassy, the e-commerce titan’s chief executive, said that being in the office helped staff “deliver the absolute best for customers and the business” by being “joined at the hip with your teammates”.
The requirement will apply to employees from Jan 2, except those working from offices that “had agile desk arrangements before the pandemic”.
Previously, Amazon had made employees visit the office at least three days a week, which the company said “has strengthened our conviction about the benefits” of being physically at work.
Mr Jassy, who joined Amazon in 1997, also pledged to cut down on unnecessary layers of middle management. He said that the business would “increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15pc” by the end of March 2025.
“Having fewer managers will remove layers,” he added. “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 … ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day.”
It comes months after Mr Jassy wrote a memo pointing out the problems with working from home. At the time, he said: “When you’re in-person, people tend to be more engaged, observant, and attuned to what’s happening in the meetings and the cultural clues being communicated.
“For those unsure about why something happened or somebody reacted a certain way, it’s easier to ask ad-hoc questions on the way to lunch, in the elevator, or the hallway; whereas when you’re at home, you’re less likely to do so.
“It’s also easier for leaders to teach when they have more people in a room at one time, [they] can better assess whether the team is digesting the information as intended; and if not, [decide] how they need to adjust their communication.”
Amazon’s push to get workers back to the offices comes amid attempts by other tech giants, including Google, Meta and Apple to clamp down on home working. Last year, Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, said: “There’s just no substitute for coming together in person.”