Amazon is asking corporate staff to return to the office five days a week from January, chief executive Andy Jassy said, and plans to reduce its layers of management.
The tech giant had previously required workers to attend the office three days per week, a mandate it had set out last year, but Mr Jassy said the company wanted staff back in the office to better address collaboration.
“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” he said in a note to workers. “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our team-mates 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. If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”
However, he said there would be exceptions for “extenuating circumstances” or where team managers had already approved remote work.
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“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,” he said.
Amazon employs more than 4,000 people in Ireland at its AWS business, and has also expanded its retail footprint here following Brexit.
The company is also seeking to remove unnecessary layers of management, and has asked teams within the organisation to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15 per cent by the end of the first quarter in 2025.
“If we do this work well, it will increase our team-mates’ ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organisations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day,” Mr Jassy said.
