Amazon issued a return-to-office (RTO) mandate in September calling its company workers again to the workplace by January 2. Over a month has handed because the mandate, and a few Amazon workers have but to see the workplace — as a result of Amazon cannot discover sufficient desks to carry its 350,000-person workforce.
In response to a Thursday report from The Wall Avenue Journal, Amazon has postponed RTO for employees assigned to dozens of U.S. places of work, together with New York Metropolis, Houston, and Atlanta, because of a scarcity of area. Amazon workers assigned to some areas are nonetheless working remotely as they await additional directions about when they need to be within the workplace full-time.
The San Francisco Bay Space is very brief on area. Amazon has 18 places of work within the area, but it surely lacks desks for a minimum of 800 workers. In response final month, an inside group submitted a proposal to Amazon’s services division asking for a brand new workplace to open within the space. In response to the WSJ report, a spreadsheet supporting the proposal has drawn signatures from near 600 Amazon workers.
Associated: JPMorgan Shuts Down Inner Message Board Feedback After Workers React to Return-to-Workplace Mandate
An Amazon spokesperson informed the WSJ in an e mail that “the overwhelming majority” of company workers have desks and that solely “a comparatively small quantity” of Amazon’s “a whole lot of places of work” are “not fairly prepared” for absolutely in-person work.
Even in places of work with desk area, there have been logistics points with the RTO mandate, similar to the place workers ought to park. Jeff Ferris, principal technologist at Amazon Net Companies Cloud, posted on X final month that when he tried to park his automotive within the workplace storage, he was turned away by safety.
“2,000 folks, 900 parking areas,” he wrote.
Haha, confirmed up for #RTO (er, return to workplace, not the standard Restoration Time Goal in my life of labor) and acquired turned away by safety on the storage. “2000 folks, 900 parking areas,” she stated. ???
— Jeff Ferris (@trackzero) January 7, 2025
Some Amazon workers who’re again within the workplace report not having teammates who work from the identical location, difficult the targets of in-person work.
When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy first introduced the RTO coverage in September, he said that it might be “simpler for our teammates to study, mannequin, observe, and strengthen our tradition; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing [is] less complicated and more practical; educating and studying from each other are extra seamless; and, groups are typically higher related to at least one one other.”
He reiterated the message at a leaked all-hands assembly in November, telling workers that the RTO mandate was about “strengthening our tradition” and fostering collaboration.
Amazon workers have been working in-person a minimum of 3 days per week since Could 2023. Different corporations with five-day in-office insurance policies embrace Salesforce and Walmart. Amazon laid off dozens of workers in its communications and sustainability departments final month.
Associated: Starbucks’ New CEO — Who Lives 1,000 Miles from HQ — Will Not Inform Workers What Particular Days to Come Into the Workplace
