Amazon ends hybrid work: Employees asked to come back to office full-time like pre-COVID era

By Team Asianet Newsable | First Published Sep 17, 2024, 4:07 PM IST

Starting next year, Amazon will require employees to work from the office five days a week, ending its hybrid work model. CEO Andy Jassy cited the need for better collaboration and invention as the reason for this shift, despite employee pushback and the success of remote work during the pandemic.

At Amazon, working hybrid days are progressively coming to an end. Starting next year, the corporation will enforce a five-day workweek requirement for employees, tightening up on the previous three-day requirement. CEO Andy Jassy stated that the shift is required in order to "invent, collaborate, and be connected" in a statement to staff members that was uploaded on the company website on Monday. The three-day rule, according to him, "strengthened our conviction about the benefits" of working in an office.

Since the epidemic, businesses have been letting many workers work from home, which has resulted in several cities, like San Francisco and Seattle, having almost vacant downtown offices. On the other hand, a few IT companies are starting to require workers to come into work two or three days a week.

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As the daily danger posed by COVID-19 has decreased, Amazon has adopted a more stringent strategy than many of its competitors. Workers have told Reuters how Amazon has forced them to relocate to Seattle or, in certain situations, report to remote offices in order to maintain their employment.

Additionally, certain workers who continuously disregarded the three-day rule were informed that they were "voluntarily resigning" and had their access to Amazon's systems blocked. Whether the new directive will be equally strict was not immediately clarified by an Amazon spokesman or in an employee Q&A provided with Reuters on Monday.

A vociferous group of workers has strongly opposed the rule, arguing that working from home is beneficial and saves money and time on transportation. Employees at Amazon's Seattle headquarters staged a walkout in May of last year in protest of the company's changes to its environment policy, layoffs, and need that employees return to the office.

By the conclusion of the first quarter of 2025, Amazon hopes to have increased the proportion of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% as part of an organisational restructure. Without providing more information, Amazon stated in the Q&A that "some organisations may identify roles that are no longer required."

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