Amazon CEO Andy Jassy orders employees back to the office 5 days a week in one of the strictest RTO mandates yet

Amazon employees who have enjoyed working remotely or on a hybrid arrangement for much of the past five years did not receive good news yesterday. On September 16, Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy issued a mandate that nearly all Amazon employees will be expected to be in the office for five days a week beginning early next year. Like most large companies, nearly all of Amazon’s office workers went entirely or mostly remote in the spring of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown orders began. (Amazon warehouse workers did not have this luxury.) After the vaccine rollout in 2021, Amazon announced it would let its director-level leaders decide where their team members could work from: home or office. Then, in 2023, Jassy announced that Amazon employees would be expected to be working back in the office for at least three days a week. But that hybrid option will end on January 2, 2025. From that date, all Amazon employees, with few exceptions, will be required to be working in the office five days a week. The Amazon RTO mandate In the memo sent to employees and published online, Jassy said Amazon has decided to return to the office in the way things were before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant. . . ” Jassy wrote. He added that “. . . we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another.” He also suggested that the company’s belief in the importance of working in the office five days a week was “strengthened” after seeing the impact of the three-day in-office mandate over the past 15 months. Exceptions to Amazon’s RTO mandate There will be some exceptions to the five-day office rules that go into effect in January—but they are unlikely to affect a large portion of Amazon’s employees. “Before the pandemic, not everybody was in the office five days a week, every week,” Jassy acknowledged. “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.” However, he continued: “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.” And don’t get too comfy with your current desk arrangement, either Besides mandating nearly all workers return to the office five days a week, Jassy also announced that Amazon will be less flexible on desk arrangements in the office. In locations that did not have agile desk arrangements before the pandemic, Jassy says the company will be bringing back assigned desk arrangements. Jassy says the above changes will allow Amazon employees to be “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected.”