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 for the reason that 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.
In keeping with 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, resulting from a scarcity of area. Amazon staff assigned to some places are nonetheless working remotely as they look ahead to additional directions about when they need to be within the workplace full-time.
The San Francisco Bay Space is particularly quick on area. Amazon has 18 places of work within the area, nevertheless it lacks desks for not less than 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. In keeping with the WSJ report, a spreadsheet supporting the proposal has drawn signatures from near 600 Amazon staff.
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An Amazon spokesperson advised 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 “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, akin to the place staff ought to park. Jeff Ferris, principal technologist at Amazon Net Companies 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 standard Restoration Time Goal in my life of labor) and obtained 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 targets of in-person work.
When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy first introduced the RTO coverage in September, he acknowledged that it might be “simpler for our teammates to be taught, mannequin, observe, and strengthen our tradition; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing [is] easier and simpler; educating and studying from each other are extra seamless; and, groups are usually higher related to 1 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 not less than 3 days per week since Might 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.
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