Amazon issued a return-to-office (RTO) mandate in September calling its company staff again to the workplace by January 2. Over a month has handed because the mandate, and a few Amazon staff have but to see the workplace — as a result of Amazon cannot discover sufficient desks to carry its 350,000-person workforce.
Based on a Thursday report from The Wall Street Journal, Amazon has postponed RTO for workers assigned to dozens of U.S. workplaces, together with New York Metropolis, Houston, and Atlanta, as a consequence of an absence of area. Amazon staff assigned to some places are nonetheless working remotely as they anticipate 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 workplaces within the area, but it surely lacks desks for a minimum of 800 staff. In response final month, an inner group submitted a proposal to Amazon’s services division asking for a brand new workplace to open within the space. Based on the WSJ report, a spreadsheet supporting the proposal has drawn signatures from near 600 Amazon staff.
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An Amazon spokesperson instructed the WSJ in an e mail that “the overwhelming majority” of company staff have desks and that solely “a comparatively small quantity” of Amazon’s “lots of of workplaces” are “not fairly prepared” for absolutely in-person work.
Even in workplaces with desk area, there have been logistics points with the RTO mandate, comparable to the place staff ought to park. Jeff Ferris, principal technologist at Amazon Net Providers Cloud, posted on X final month that when he tried to park his automobile within the workplace storage, he was turned away by safety.
“2,000 individuals, 900 parking areas,” he wrote.
Haha, confirmed up for #RTO (er, return to workplace, not the same old Restoration Time Goal in my life of labor) and bought turned away by safety on the storage. “2000 individuals, 900 parking areas,” she stated. ???
— Jeff Ferris (@trackzero) January 7, 2025
Some Amazon staff who’re again within the workplace report not having teammates who work from the identical location, difficult the aims of in-person work.
When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy first introduced the RTO coverage in September, he acknowledged that it could be “simpler for our teammates to be taught, mannequin, observe, and strengthen our tradition; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing [is] easier and more practical; educating and studying from each other are extra seamless; and, groups are usually higher linked to at least one one other.”
He reiterated the message at a leaked all-hands assembly in November, telling staff that the RTO mandate was about “strengthening our tradition” and fostering collaboration.
Amazon staff have been working in-person a minimum of 3 days per week since May 2023. Different corporations with five-day in-office insurance policies embrace Salesforce and Walmart. Amazon laid off dozens of staff in its communications and sustainability departments final month.
