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Amazon calls employees back to the office for 5 days a week: end of remote working

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announces return to presence for all employees as of January, eliminating remote work

Zanelotti (Amazon): “Ecco come supportiamo le Pmi per promuovere il Made in Italy”

2' min read

2' min read

Bye bye smart working: Amazon calls employees back to the company five days a week. The ceo of the e-commerce giant Andy Jassy announced the return to presence as of 2 January. Previously, the company had asked employees to work in the office at least three days, depending on the needs of their team. Amazon's plans to return to the office include exceptions for special circumstances or in cases where managers have already granted the employee a stable position working remotely.

"We are aware that some of our employees may have set up their personal lives in such a way that returning to the office for five days a week will require some adjustments," Jassy said in the message, also published on Amazon's corporate blog.

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Complicated internal procedures

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The move confirms what some long-standing employees have been muttering for years: it has become more difficult to get things done at Amazon. Stories of endless decision-making processes, pointless meetings and multiplying approval levels have become commonplace in a company that continues to present itself around as a collection of teams tasked with operating as start-ups.

Jassy mentioned some of these phenomena in his note, speaking of "premeetings prior to meetings making decisions, a longer queue of managers who feel they have to review an issue before it goes ahead, initiative managers who feel they do not have to make recommendations because the decision will be made elsewhere".

By the end of March 2025, Jassy stated that every large Amazon organisation will have to increase the ratio of individual employees to managers by 15 per cent. He also announced the establishment of a hotline for employees to raise concerns about unnecessary processes.

"We want to operate as the biggest start-up in the world," he said in the message. "This means having a passion for constant invention for customers, a strong sense of urgency (for most great opportunities, it's a rush!), a high sense of ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply connected collaboration (you need to be united with your teammates when inventing and solving difficult problems) and a shared commitment to each other."

Firmato Protocollo tra Amazon e Istituzioni per la crescita e protezione del Made in Italy nel mondo

Most of the approximately 1.5 million employees of Amazon worldwide are hourly employees who retrieve items and ship packages, people for whom remote work has never been an option. But the company also employs hundreds of thousands of employees: it had around 350,000 on the eve of its biggest ever layoffs, which began in late 2022.

Effects on traffic

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The news is likely to result in increased foot traffic in the cities where Amazon operates. These include Seattle, where the company is the largest, as well as locations such as Arlington, Virginia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, Boston and Nashville.

The company's previous efforts to bring workers back to the office met with resistance from some employees, who accused the company of being inflexible and failing to provide data showing that working in person produced better results. "Maintaining a strong culture is not a birthright," Jassy wrote. "You have to work at it all the time."

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