'We continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,' says CEO
Employees at Amazon will be required to return onsite for five days a week starting January 2, 2025, CEO Andy Jassy announced on Monday.
"We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID," the CEO said in a memo to employees.
According to Jassy, employees are expected to be in the office for the whole work week except for "extenuating circumstances" or if they have a Remote Work Exception approved by their s-team leader.
The CEO made the announcement as he outlined the benefits of working in person.
“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.
"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.”
The announcement officially puts an end to Amazon's hybrid work arrangement that was implemented in May 2023, where employees are told to show up in person at least three days a week.
It also follows Amazon's recent reported stringent measures to enforce the hybrid work arrangement, where office deniers are warned of missing out on promotion or losing their jobs.
“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,” said Jassy.
Amazon will bring back assigned desk arrangements in locations that were previously organized that way, including the U.S. headquarters locations, while offices with “agile” desk arrangements before the pandemic, including much of Europe, will continue to operate that way.
“I want to thank our leaders and support teams in advance for the work they will do to improve their org structures over the coming months,” Jassy said in the announcement. “With a company of our size and complexity, the work won’t be trivial and it will test our collective ability to invent and simplify when it comes to how we organize and go after the meaningful opportunities we have across all of our businesses.”
Meanwhile, Jassy also announced that they are increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
The CEO said having fewer managers will "remove layers and flatten organisations more than they are today."
"If we do this work well, it will increase our teammates' 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," he said.
Amazon's workforce has been steadily growing since the past year, with more than 1.53 million employees as of the second quarter of 2024, according to its latest financial results.
"With a company of our size and complexity, the work won't be trivial and it will test our collective ability to invent and simplify when it comes to how we organise and go after the meaningful opportunities we have across all of our businesses," Jassy said.
