Amazon Employees Revolt Against Return-To-Office Policy

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s directive issued earlier this week for all of the company’s corporate employees to return to the office five days a week starting January 2 has come up against some stiff resistance.

Hundreds of employees have expressed their displeasure, according to a report. A survey that has been circulated internally among the employees finds that the average employee at the company is “strongly dissatisfied” with the return-to-office edict, according to Fortune.

The survey was created by Amazon employees who then shared it to at least 30,000 members who reportedly logged into a Slack channel called “remote advocacy”, according to Fortune.

The survey found that respondents had marked down a 1.4 on a scale of up to 5 — with 1 meaning “strongly dissatisfied” and 5 being “strongly satisfied.”

The authors of the survey said they plan to aggregate and share the results by email with Jassy and other executives so as to “provide them with clear insight into the impact of this policy on employees, including the challenges identified and proposed solutions.”

“We are seeking honest, constructive feedback on the recent decision to require a 5-day return to the office schedule,” the survey introduction reads.

Jassy’s decision to implement a complete back-to-the-office structure for employees, follows the company’s current hybrid work policy wherein employees are expected to work from the office at least three days a week.

“Amazon got used to people having an extra 5-10 hours a week to work because we weren’t commuting,” an employee told Fortune. “RTO means that we no longer have the extra time to commit to Amazon and expectations of employees needs to adjust to reflect that. I can’t hop onto an 8am meeting with the folks in HQ2 or the East Coast anymore,” the employee said.

Jassy noted that there will be ‘extenuating circumstances’ under which some employees might occasionally be granted a work-from-home exception. Those conditions will be similar to the exceptions made prior to the pandemic. “Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week. If you or your child were sick, if you had some sort of house emergency, if you were on the road seeing customers or partners, if you needed a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, people worked remotely. This was understood, and will be moving forward as well.

“But, 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 — our expectation is that people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances (like the ones mentioned above) or if you already have a Remote Work Exception approved through your s-team lead.”

Jassy made a case for changing the existing work conditions by saying that it was easier for teammates to “learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture” and added that “collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective” as well as “teams tend to be better connected to one another.”

Amazon had approximately 350,000 office workers on the eve of its largest-ever layoffs, which began in late 2022. Starting from the end of 2022 and continuing through last year, Amazon cut nearly 27,000 jobs across nearly every area of the company.