Home office at Amazon is a thing of the past. From January, office presence will be mandatory. Company boss Andy Jassy also announced the elimination of management levels.
Amazon has been trying to get its employees back into the office for some time now. Anyone who wants to get ahead in the company is expected to be present. The new year will mark the final end of home offices and mobile working.
“We have decided that we will return to working in the office as we did before the Covid outbreak,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a message sent to all employees. Jassy replaced Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as CEO in 2021.
With the decision, Amazon is revising the work policies it introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many other large technology companies, Amazon had allowed its employees to work from home at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020.
Previously, two days of home office were possible
Most recently, employees had to work in person at least three times a week, depending on the needs of their team. Theoretically, two days of absence per week were possible. From January 2, 2025, this will end, and working in the office will become the norm. Five days a week. “Before the pandemic, it was not a given that people could work from home two days a week, and that will continue to be the case in the future – we assume that, unless there are special circumstances, people will be in the office,” says Jassy.
He explained: “We have observed that it is easier for our team members to learn, model, practice and reinforce our culture. Collaboration, brainstorming and invention are easier and more effective. Mutual teaching and learning is smoother and teams tend to be better connected,” said Jassy.
The requirement to be present is only waived in justified exceptions, such as in the case of illness or a household emergency. As a reward, employees will once again have their own desks in the office, and so-called hot desking will be abolished.
Managers who slow things down should be eliminated
Management layers will also be eliminated to reduce the burden of meetings. Team sizes will be increased by 15 percent, which will result in a significant loss of management positions. In his message, Jassy explained that Amazon has added more layers of management than ever before in the years of growth. “This has created artifacts that we would like to change (such as pre-meetings for pre-meetings for decision meetings, a long line of managers who feel they have to review an issue before passing it on, originators of initiatives who feel they have to provide less input because the decision is being made elsewhere, and so on).”
Jassy acknowledged that some employees “have arranged their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office on a regular basis five days a week will require some adjustments.” The January 2 deadline is intended to “help ensure a smooth transition.”
Source: Stern
