New poll demonstrates employees' continued resistance to return-to-office mandate
Amazon employees are said to be "strongly dissatisfied" with the company's latest mandate to make them come to the office five days a week.
In a poll circulated by Amazon employees on Slack, which has been seen by Fortune, respondents gave the mandate a 1.4 average satisfaction score out of five.
A score of one means "strongly dissatisfied," while five represents "strongly satisfied."
Fortune, however, also noted that the poll was distributed to a Slack channel that advocated for remote work in Amazon, which has over 30,000 members.
This means that employees who are in favour of remote or hybrid work may have been "more likely to respond to the survey and therefore skew the findings," according to Fortune.
The poll's introduction stated that it is seeking "honest, constructive feedback on the recent decision to require a five-day return to the office schedule."
Employees at Amazon have long resisted office-return plans, with some corporate workers staging a walkout in 2023 to protest against the plan.
Amazon's office-return mandate
The latest mandate, which will take effect in January 2025, will end Amazon's hybrid work arrangement that was implemented in May 2023.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the mandate as he noted the benefits of onsite work arrangements.
"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," Jassy said.
One employee told Fortune that a return-to-office mandate will cause some employees to lose the flexibility to "easily shift hours and collaborate."
There are other employees, however, who told Fortune that using the length or cost of commutes as excuses against five-day work arrangements "would have seemed absurd" pre-pandemic.
Amazon, however, doubled down on its office-return schemes by warning office deniers that they could lose their jobs or miss out on promotion.
