On January 2, Amazon 350,000 corporate employees will have to return to the office five days a week instead of working a hybrid schedule. After the announcement, employees speculated that the mandate was a way to force them to leave without layoffs, but Amazon CEO Andy Jassy assured employees at a meeting Tuesday that this was not Amazon's way of forcing them out. to secretly leave.
In a transcript uncovered by Reuters, Jassy states that the move to fully in-person work was to strengthen culture, not cut costs.
“A number of people I've seen theorized that the reason we were doing this was, it was a layoff behind the scenes, or we made some kind of deal with the city or cities,” Jassy said. according to Reuters. “I can tell you both are not true. You know, this was not a cost game for us. This is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture.”
He later added that returning to the office was “an adjustment,” but said, “We'll work through this adjustment together.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photo: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A July poll showed about one in four C-suite executives hoped strict back-to-office mandates would force employees to leave. Uncompromising back-to-office policies were sometimes furloughs in disguise, the study found.
At Amazon, 91% of the 2,500 employees surveyed in September said they were “dissatisfied” with the return-to-office policy, and 73% indicated they were already considering looking for other jobs.
Back to the office has continued to be a point of contention at Amazon over the past few months. In October, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said in a leaked meeting that there were “other companies around” for Amazon employees who didn't like the return-to-office policy,
523 Amazon employees sent a letter in Garman last week protesting his remarks. These workers “not only have personal experience that demonstrates the benefits of remote work, but have seen extensive data that supports that experience,” the letter states.
Related: Hybrid workers were put to the test against fully office workers – here's who came out on top
One data point in support of hybrid work over fully in-person work is a study published in the scientific journal Nature in June. The study randomly divided 1,612 employees of the travel company Trip.com into two random groups: one group worked entirely in person and the other worked two days a week from home and three days a week in the office in a hybrid schedule.
The findings showed that attrition rates dropped by a third and job satisfaction increased in the hybrid group.