Amazon’s recent mandate to return to office hasn’t gone down well with the employees, CNBC reported. A cohort of Amazon staff is appealing to CEO Andy Jassy to reconsider the decision. Last Friday, Jassy declared that starting from May 1st, corporate employees must spend no less than three days per week in the office. Jassy and Amazon’s S-team, the leadership group, made this decision based on the belief that working together in person would enhance collaboration and innovation among employees, as well as reinforce the company’s culture.
Amazon’s latest move represents a departure from the current policy that was drafted keeping the pandemic in mind. The policy, which was last updated in October 2021 allowed managers to determine the frequency at which their teams needed to be physically present in the office. Since then, Amazon’s white-collar workforce has been operating under a mix of remote and hybrid work arrangements.
In response to the new return-to-office mandate, employees created a Slack channel on Friday to promote remote work and express their concerns. More than 14,000 workers have since joined the channel already. That is not all as the employees have also drafted a petition addressed to Jassy and the S-team, urging the leadership to abandon the new policy. They argued that the new policy goes against Amazon’s principles of diversity and inclusion, affordable housing, and sustainability, as well as its commitment to being the “Earth’s Best Employer.”
The workers also highlighted Jassy’s prior remarks regarding plans for returning to the office, in which he stated that there is no universal approach for how each team operates most effectively and praised the advantages of remote work.
An anonymous employee stated that staff members who relocated during the pandemic or were recruited for remote positions are anxious about the potential impact of the new policy. Over the last three years, Amazon has experienced a surge in its headcount, and it has recruited a higher number of employees outside its primary tech centers, including Seattle, New York, and Northern California, as it has adopted a more dispersed workforce.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in the world of technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles as well, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. Motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot and maybe I’ll make a film sometime in the future.